


the lotus eater

by irishais, Jessicamariek



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Dreamscapes, F/F, F/M, Gen, Sorceresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 28,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29547342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishais/pseuds/irishais, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessicamariek/pseuds/Jessicamariek
Summary: Rinoa has put more than thirty years between herself and Garden; too bad that it's going to take more than time and distance to keep the past where she wants it to stay.
Relationships: Seifer Almasy/Rinoa Heartilly, Squall Leonhart/Quistis Trepe
Comments: 24
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

On the back streets of Timber, if one knows where to look, or if one gets lucky (or lost), they will find a small bookshop tucked in an alley. 

It’s nondescript, a simple gold-painted name in the window that has faded to an echo of itself, a handful of books displayed beneath on plastic risers. It’s hard to say if the titles ever change, and if they do, they’re bland enough to be unremarkable in the rotation. 

The building itself sits between an Esthari carryout restaurant and a lumber warehouse, and the placard on the blue-painted door flips erratically from _open_ to _closed_ , depending on the owner’s whim. There are no set hours listed anywhere, no advertisements of sales or special savings-- sometimes it stays open all night, sometimes when she’s feeling flighty, it is closed for days. 

The one constant thing is the electric scent of magic that hangs in the air, like inhaling stardust. On days when the sunlight hits just right, one can see the shimmer in the air, sparkling like the nighttime sky. 

Customers are few, and mostly regulars, people come to browse or buy dog-eared paperbacks three-owners-old. She trades more than she sells; it keeps the middleman out, replenishing stock from estate sales and people downsizing their libraries, instead of having to deal with publishers trying to push their latest into her hands. 

No one understands how she manages to stay in business, but Rinoa Heartilly (formerly Leonhart, formerly a lot of things), doesn’t feel the need to answer those kinds of questions. It’s no one’s business but her own, and a couple of lawyers with email addresses that end in “bgarden.edu.” The building is hers, in title and name, and there are no employees to worry about paying. 

It’s simply something to _do_ , to fill up her days; free time is something she has quite a lot of, as the years pass, the clock ticks on. Timber changes with the seasons. Every time she catches her reflection in a mirror or her phone or a passing window, Rinoa doesn’t think she’s changed very much at all. Thinner, now, hard-won muscle of combat softened to more graceful lines, the product of yoga and walks around town-- no sense in owning a car when one doesn’t need to go very far to get where they want to be. Her hair is longer, still dark, bleached strands eons gone, grown out and finally trimmed off a lifetime ago. 

Today, she lets it hang loose around her shoulders, a curtain of dark that is more comfort than annoyance. Mostly, she could have _sworn_ there was an extra hair tie in her purse, but only came up with gum wrappers and receipts and her wallet, and resigned herself to the inevitable. 

A copper bell, an antiquated impulse picked up at a flea market ages ago, hangs over the door, something to draw her out of idle daydreams or a good book (or a trashy magazine). It’s served its purpose well over the years, chiming just as brightly as the day it was installed-- although, it probably helps that not many people come barreling through her door these days. 

The bell chimes now, though, and Rinoa doesn’t lift her head from the book she’s reading (skimming, really, a tawdry romance that had an amusing cover), doesn’t even drop the loose strand of hair she’s idly twirling around her fingers, knotting and unknotting as she reads. 

“Let me know if you need help finding anything.” 

The footsteps don’t proceed deeper into the store, coming instead her direction. With a sigh, she pulls a stretch of receipt paper to use as a bookmark, and sets the book aside to get up from her comfortable chair behind the counter. 

It’s only when she’s halfway to standing that she finally realizes who’s walked into her door; by then it’s too late to stop the surprise from overtaking her features.

“--Squall.” 

Thank god for the plank of wood that separates the two of them-- she may have crossed fifty just the other week, but her heart rushes for a moment like she’s seventeen all over again, like it does _every_ time she sees his face, like she’s still on the far side of a ballroom instead, drumming up her courage to make a move. 

Fifty looks well on him, hair still dark save for a few streaks of gray he either doesn’t care about or won’t admit are there, one eye still the same shade as the sea at dawn. He still holds himself upright with the carriage of a SeeD, hands coming to rest lightly on the edge of the counter, spine straight; even the scarring that crosses the left side of his face and the milky white of that eye doesn’t detract from the line of his jaw and the dark stubble there. He’s either forgotten to shave, or he’s been too busy to keep up with it. 

Some things never change, and she wouldn’t waste gil trying to bet in either direction. She knows him too well. 

“I would have called, but--” A shrug, shoulders still broad in a dark blue overcoat. She wonders if it’s Garden-issue, or if he’s finally gotten some belated sense of style in the years since their divorce. “Your phone said it was disconnected.” 

“Oh. Yeah. I changed numbers recently. Too many people calling about a warranty for a car I don’t have.” Should she have given him the new one? No. It’s no longer his business what she does, as long as the silver bangle stays around her wrist and the world doesn’t try to hunt her down. “Sorry. You just surprised me, that’s all.”

“Sorry.” An echo of her own, and that slight smile deepens for only a second, gone as quickly as it’s come.

Rinoa waves off his apology. They’re sorry about a lot of things, but she doesn’t think any of them matter now. He wouldn’t have come all this way if it weren’t important. 

The remains of any hope of this being simply a pleasure visit disappears as the silence stretches on between them-- what she wouldn’t _give_ for the distraction of a dog right now, Angelo’s years-gone absence an old ache in her chest that she tries not to dwell on. 

If not a dog to distract, then the deep thread of their knighting, something she can _read_ . She hasn’t touched that connection in a long time, though, barricaded behind Odine metal and faded with years, with perpetual distance between Rinoa Heartilly and Balamb Garden, her obligations long since repaid in vials of blood, what makes her _her_ stored in some file somewhere in Garden’s archives. 

Her gaze drops to his hands on the counter, ensconced in black leather gloves against the winter’s oncoming chill. Beneath the left, she knows there’s another wedding ring, one that doesn’t match the one stuffed deep in her jewelry box at home. 

Too long a silence, now, too much time to get caught up in old feelings. She feels compelled to break it. 

“You can tell me what’s going on, since I doubt you came here looking for something to read.” 

She doesn’t know what she expects him to say, only that what comes out of his mouth is not even remotely close to anything on her list. Maybe something to do with Quistis, or Irvine, the last few remaining members of what was once their party. 

She hopes it isn’t Quistis, mentally bracing herself as he opens his mouth to answer. 

“It’s Ellone. I need your help finding her.”


	2. Chapter 2

The train ride is mostly quiet, oscillating between awkward and… something pretending to be comfortable, and almost succeeding. The magic itches under her skin, trying to get out, trying to reforge that connection between them - she pushes it down firmly, three decades of experience at taming the power in her veins making it simple to resist the impulse.

She does give in to one whim, though, when Squall gets the car onto the highway between the city proper and Garden, and puts the window down. Her hair is still loose, and she lets the salt-scented evening air send it swirling around her shoulders and head. She finds his annoyance at the strands whipping into his face only slightly more amusing than she thinks she should.

It’s late evening by the time they reach Balamb Garden, and she’s just as glad to be arriving when there won’t be many people running around the halls. It’s been years since she was here, and the last thing she wants to deal with right now is someone recognizing her, asking why she’s back-- or worse, if she’s staying.

“It’s been a while since you were back, huh,” Squall says quietly; she knows the bangle on her wrist means it’s coincidence. 

“Seven, almost eight years,” she says. “Since Cid’s funeral.” He makes a quiet _hmm_ sound and lets it drop. That had been a bad day, for all of them. 

Rinoa looks around in the dim, after-hours lights of the Garden’s main structure. The place still smells the same, metal and lemon-scented industrial cleaner, the occasional sharp tang of paramagic ozone. They’ve replaced the flooring at some point, she notices, swapped the warm brown linoleum for a deep greyish blue that clicks under her shoes. 

Once, she called this home. Once upon a time.

She’s a little surprised when Squall leads her directly to the infirmary - she’d expected a missing-persons investigation to be running from the operations nerve center on the third floor, or at least from his office. The infirmary’s changed even less than the rest of Garden, and she breathes in the smell of antiseptic and peroxide and sterile packs of everything.

Once upon a time, back when she thought she’d had her life figured out, this had been her world as well. She was Dr. Kadowaki’s assistant and apprentice - first as an excuse to keep her here, then as something she genuinely enjoyed. It was challenging and rewarding and Hyne knows it kept her busy. 

She doesn’t miss much about this place. She does miss the Doctor.

“There you are,” says a voice to her left, and as if summoned by her thoughts, Lena Kadowaki walks in. She’s old now, hair gone full grey and deep wrinkles around her eyes, but she smiles at Rinoa as if it’s been days since they spoke, rather than the better part of a decade. 

“ _Lena_ ,” and it’s a relief to say her name-- Rinoa abandons Squall’s side quickly, moving to embrace her. “I’m glad to see you.” 

Kadowaki returns her hug without hesitation. “I’m happy _he_ found you-- they were getting ready to pony up the cash for a search party.”

It’s the first moment since she boarded the train that Rinoa feels welcome at all here, the prodigal daughter come back home, no matter how temporarily. 

“Dr. Kadowaki.” Squall’s voice is neutral, a tone they all know too well. He is _Commander_ here, and the deference is immediate, both to the rank and the nature of their visit. 

It doesn’t stop Rinoa from hating him for just a second, when Dr. K lets her go, turning back toward the door that leads to more beds than there used to be. 

“I see you finally got the budget committee to pay for the second expansion,” she comments, only because she knows how much Squall loathes small talk and it’s another barrier to put between herself and the inevitable last row, where there are too many machines, too many tubes, and someone sitting in a chair alongside, blonde head bent over the screen of her tablet. 

“Only took them twenty years and the clinic in town finally closing. Once we lost our overflow space there, well, they were a little more agreeable when it came to finding the extra gil.” Dr. Kadowaki reaches into a box mounted on the wall, pulling out a pair of blue sterile gloves for herself, passing a second pair to Rinoa without thinking. Old habits run deep, no matter how long it’s been. 

She puts them on equally as habitually, the feeling of powdered latex around her fingers too familiar to ignore, and follows the doctor to that last curtain. The sound of footsteps bounces off the walls, loud in the still and sterile air, and the blonde woman by the bed looks up. She looks _exhausted_ , dark circles behind simple wire-rimmed glasses,her blue eyes slightly bloodshot and hair in an improvised bun secured with a cheap pen.

“Hi, Quistis,” Rinoa says simply. She knows every literary trope in every novel she’s read says that she should hold some sort of enmity toward her ex-husband’s second wife, but it’s just… not there.

Once upon a time, they were close as family. Once upon a time, they owed each other their lives, over and over, healing magic and close saves and the trust that’s only built in battle. Now, it’s just… so carefully neutral. Words chosen with the precision of Quistis’s spellcasting, back then. 

“Hi, Rinoa,” she responds, and the words hang in the air between them for a moment. Friends, sisters, rivals, strangers. Something in between and all at the same time, maybe. Maybe nothing at all.

It’s just this. Just the two of them, the dim lights, the smell of antiseptic and sterile sheets. The beep of machines and the click of Rinoa’s shoes on the floor, the worry in Quistis’ eyes, Squall’s uncomfortable shift and swallow behind her-- fifteen feet between them that might as well be fifteen miles.

Life isn’t as clean and simple as books make it out to be.

Kadowaki clears her throat, and it breaks Rinoa out of her thoughts. She gives Quistis a wobbly, _I’m-trying_ kind of half-smile and turns her attention to the dark-haired woman at the center of the cluster of monitoring equipment. 

“I thought you said you needed help finding her,” Rinoa says, raising an eyebrow as she looks sidelong over at Squall. Ellone looks tiny beneath the tangle of wires and tubing, motionless and pale as the alabaster statues in the lobby. 

“She’s…” Squall sighs in frustration, rubs his forehead like he’s getting a headache. “She’s here, but she’s not… _here_ here.” Rinoa blinks at him in confusion, then looks back at Elle, trying to remember how to think like a medic again. 

She’s so still, breath and pulse unnaturally slow, no movement of her eyes under her lids. Something stirs in a deep, old memory - a forest, an argument, her newfound companions collapsing into an unnatural sleep...

“How long has she been like this?”

“Almost three days,” Kadowaki says as Rinoa crosses to the other side of the bed. She makes as if to touch Elle’s forehead, to feel her temperature, or just to make contact, but then yanks her hand back like she’s been shocked.

Magic --real magic, _Source_ magic, deep and dark and hungry -- absolutely _seethes_ under Ellone’s skin. Even through the muffle of her bracelet, she can feel it, roiling like a hurricane, a maelstrom implausibly contained in so delicate a frame. Rinoa looks up sharply, meets Squall’s eye, takes a deep breath. 

She knows now why they sought her out.

“She’s dream-walking.” 

\--

This place is both familiar and ever-changing. It looks like a muddy brownish-grey, lines and clouds of every color of the spectrum mixed together all at once; it makes her think of the watercolors she’d bought Zell’s little girl when she was small, and Sarah had mixed them all together to see what would happen. It sounds like a thousand voices, near and far and inside her skull all at the same time, the occasional distant scream or whisper of her own name. And it _feels_ like there’s an itch under her skin, poison ivy dragged along her very bones, and she needs to peel her flesh off to scratch it. 

Squall has been here before, she thinks, but-- no. Not _here_ , somewhere like it, an endless stretch of desert drenched in isolation and loneliness that makes her feet feel ever-heavier with every step Ellone takes. 

_I’m going to die here_ , she thinks, and doesn’t understand why. 

“ _Hello?!_ ” she yells into the aether, but just like every other time she’s shouted for help, her own words reverberate back, striking hollow into her ears. 

A streak of blue flashes across the sky, lightning in a bottle, the ghost of a maybe-familiar laugh in the wind. Ellone runs for it, bare feet pounding against the desert dust, orange smoke flying up in her wake. “Please! Help me!” 

But the blue streak vanishes just as fast as it arrived, and she is brought to her knees, hair hanging short and sweat-streaked in her eyes-- no, _please_ , come _back!_ she begs of the sky, but it clouds over dark, colors muted, and all she can see is brown-grey _nothing_. 

She is alone. 

She’s so alone.


	3. Chapter 3

An hour past dawn the next morning, Rinoa looks up from her second cup of tea (not coffee, never coffee, especially not the tar-black caffeine sludge that keeps Garden running) as her phone screen lights up.

_ >>open ur door _

She smiles a lopsided, regretful little smile as she unlocks the device and types in a reply.

_ >>I’m not at home right now :( something kinda big came up and I don’t know when I’ll be back _

He replies before she can even set the phone down.

_ >>no the one at ur room rn _

Rinoa reads that message twice, filling in the missing vowels as she goes, then looks suspiciously at the door to the lightly furnished officer’s quarters they’ve put her up in for the time being. 

She keeps most of her magic locked away, either behind Odine metal or behind her own will, but she can still let it push out sometimes. Let it reach out, and tell her exactly who is standing outside her door… _leaning_ against it, actually. 

And, well, Rinoa has always had that streak of mischief in her.

She pads barefoot to the door, almost holding her breath to not make a sound, then yanks it open in a sudden movement.

Seifer Almasy falls backward, flat on his ass, in front of her.

And he, of course, has the audacity to _grin_.

“Mornin’.”

“What in all the hells are you doing here,” she says, voice somewhere between annoyed and fond. She’s not asking, she already knows, but-- it’s _Seifer_.

“Probably the same thing you are-- getting called in for a special project, of sorts.” He pulls himself to his feet as she leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed and a smile threatening to spread across her face. “Should be careful with those stunts, Rin-- I coulda broken a hip.” 

“When did you get in?” She deliberately bites back a number of retorts about how she knows _precisely_ how much stress and impact his hips can take-- it’s too damn early and she has too much to deal with today. Most days, their double-entendre contests-- and the physical activities that usually follow them-- would be a very welcome distraction, but not right now.

“Twenty-ish minutes ago?” he says, tilting his head slightly as his smile softens. “Mom’s downstairs in the infirmary already, she wants to see you.”

Rinoa does smile for real at that.

\--

Edea Kramer is still gravely beautiful, even with her long hair gone ombre-white and a tracework of wrinkles taking the place where dark tendrils of veins had been, once upon a time. Seifer’s told Rinoa that his mother has trouble walking farther distances now, so the wheelchair isn’t a surprise, but it still tugs at Rinoa’s heart a little to see the woman she used to think of as a second mother look so fragile.

“... but you know it’s not as if I can do this myself,” she’s saying as Rinoa and Seifer walk into the infirmary. “I can give her instructions, but if Ellone’s really lost in the stream, there’s no way to communicate from the outside once Rinoa’s gone in after her.” Edea’s voice is still warm and soothing, and Rinoa’s mind immediately draws a comparison to the tea left behind on the table in her borrowed room.

“That’s exactly the problem,” Squall replies, leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees in the same posture he’s been using since Rinoa met him, and probably even longer. “I don’t think she’s ever had to do this before, and if--” He breaks off, looking over to see the source of the loud, thumping footsteps coming from Seifer’s boots. “Good morning, Rinoa -- welcome back, Almasy.” He’s formal again, all business, walls _firmly_ back in place. 

“Good morning,” Rinoa replies as Seifer yawns and sits heavily down on the nearest unused bed. 

“I’d say you’re looking good, Leonhart, but I try not to tell bald-faced lies in front of my mother.” Squall’s good eye twitches in annoyance, and Rinoa tries not to roll her own-- she has more important things to think about than a forty-something year old contest of verbal snipes. 

“Edea,” she says with a smile that’s immediately returned back to her.   
  
“Come here, sweetheart,” Edea says, holding her arms out, and Rinoa gladly bends down and hugs her. It’s been years-- seven, almost eight-- since they saw each other, and that had been… 

_Cid is gone-- a heart attack, according to Doc-- and Edea is broken._

_She’s barely speaking, in shock too deep for words or tears; it’s all Seifer can do to make sure she’s eating and drinking enough to keep her strength, a confession made in a frustrated, late-night phone call, when he’d sounded so tired it had_ almost _gotten Rinoa to take the midnight train all the way out to Centra. She’d offered. He’d declined._

 _So, Rinoa’s here for_ her _, not for any of the people still in Balamb Garden. She exchanges polite pleasantries with former acquaintances, offers her condolences where appropriate, and stays by Edea’s side._

_Even with one’s magic revoked and the other’s muted, it’s still there between them, connecting them. Cid is gone, Edea an anchorless ship on a tempest sea._

_Rinoa tries to be the steady lighthouse beacon guiding her through the storm._

_In the cemetery, Rinoa sits on one side of her, Seifer on the other, Squall and Xu and Quistis reading eulogies in turn. There’s a mound of spent pistol shells next to it that reaches up to Rinoa’s knee, a SeeD mourning ritual that nobody remembers the origin of, and an ancient, but well-kept, gunblade laying on top of the coffin._

_She knows that later it will be driven point-first into newly-dug earth in front of the headstone, the weapon laid to rest with its master - and she remembers Strange Vision stuck in loose soil, Ehrgeiz laying next to fresh-carved stone, so many others so quickly that she had been surprised the ground hadn’t turned entirely to rust._

Rinoa takes a deep breath, pushing the memories out of focus. Edea’s hair smells like lilac shampoo and fresh air, and her hands are warm and slender where they rest on Rinoa’s shoulders, then move to cup her face between them as the two women move apart.

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Neither have you,” and at that, Edea’s smile blossoms; Rinoa’s hand covers hers for a long beat, before drawing back upright. She regrets leaving her tea behind, aware of just how _tired_ she is-- travel is exhausting, Garden’s beds like sleeping on bricks. She can’t even imagine the haul from Centra to Balamb, especially on such short notice. 

But the small talk only delays the inevitable, ignores the Behemoth in the room. 

“What were you talking about?” 

There is an uneasy pause. Edea glances at Squall; Seifer offers a shrug, a mouthed, _don’t ask me_. Squall gets the blunt-force of Rinoa’s gaze, and has the decency, at least, to look a little abashed. 

“You’re the only one who’s capable of going in after her. Matron says she can guide you in, but--” 

All that magic, wild and riotous, churning just beneath Ellone’s fair skin. She’s had nearly a lifetime of magic, of managing her own inherited gifts, but leaping headlong into _that_ , not even knowing what she’s looking for, how she’s supposed to get back--

“After that, I’m on my own?” Considering how shaky the prospect makes her feel, Rinoa’s voice comes out casually confident. She’s always been good at projecting a front. 

“No. No _way_.” Seifer is on his feet immediately, interjection as abrupt as pulling the pin from a grenade. “ _I’ll_ go in with her, if you’re too chickenshit to do it, Leonhart.” 

What she _doesn’t_ expect is her ex-husband’s reaction to Seifer’s outburst, an explosion that matches Seifer’s own. 

“Like _hell_ you will-- if anyone’s going in there with her, it’s _me_. You’re not _remotely_ qualified--” 

Seifer’s laugh is stark and sarcastic. “You’re gonna pull _rank_ , Leonhart? Gonna grab another shot at playing hero because I managed to get _out_ of here?” His arm is up, long fingers pointing straight at Rinoa without looking at her. “That’s a bullshit argument, and _you know it_. You _left_ her, you don’t get to pretend that you still have some goddamned _claim_ on her. She’s not Garden’s little pet _witch_ , she didn’t have to come here just because _you called_ \--” 

She grabs his arm before he can put his fist in Squall’s face, because she’s been witness to too many of these fights over the years to not know its inevitable end, and Seifer’s snarl is still on his lips. 

“Rin, you don’t have to do this. You don’t owe him _anything_ \-- he wants to _hire outside help_ , he can _pay_ for it--” 

“ _Don’t_ ,” she says, before he can get anything else out. Anything he might kind of regret, anyway. Not that she’s known Seifer to regret very much of what he says. 

It’s like they’re all teenagers again. One a raging storm, the other a steel wall, and her caught in the center of it all, trying to make peace between them-- only now they’ve got a lifetime’s worth of additional grievances built up, scarred faces, scarred bodies, scarred hearts. She was never all that successful in stopping their fights, even when they were younger, and now--

“You presumptuous little _jackass_ \--” Squall’s on his feet now, ice-blue fire in his good eye, a fury Rinoa remembers from the days when they were young and reckless, immortal on a battlefield as long as they had each other. “You dare come in here acting like you’ve got a goddamn _clue_ what--”

“Yeah, well, I may not have a goddamned _clue_ , but at least I’m actually _there for her--”_

None of them miss it when Squall snorts, turning away, muttering a deliberately audible, “Yeah, you _would_ still be acting like a fucking lapdog...” 

Rinoa knows by now that she can’t hold Seifer back when he puts his mind to beating someone into the floor, fifty years old or not, but it doesn’t stop her from trying, fingers white-knuckled around his sleeve as he moves to lunge, feeling her shoes slip across the white-tiled floor with the effort.

“That’s _enough_ , boys.” All three of them stop short, heads snapping around to stare at Edea. Her seaglass eyes are narrowed in irritation, and the absolute steel in her voice for that moment-- the unbreakable will of the woman who taught Rinoa herself how to control their shared magic-- for a second, Edea is not a frail old woman, but a force of goddamn nature. “We have more important things to worry about right now,” she continues with a pointed look at Ellone.

“Yes, Matron,” they both say in not-quite-unison, habits half a century old coming back unbidden. And just like that, the tension drops-- doesn’t disappear, just cools from a rolling boil to a bare simmer. 

Seifer shakes his arm out of her hold. She lets him go. 

No one speaks for a while. 

“Okay,” Rinoa says finally. “If Edea thinks she can guide me through it, I’ll go in. I’ll see if I can find her. If not, I’ll come back out.” 

It is, of course, never that simple.


	4. Chapter 4

Rinoa takes a deep breath, laces her fingers with Ellone’s, and forces herself not to flinch back at the way the magic makes her flesh tingle and crawl. Whatever’s roiling beneath Elle’s skin, it’s _angry…_ she looks up, meets Edea’s calm gaze for a moment, then closes her eyes. 

The magic stretches out, a cliff’s edge inviting her closer, closer-- she edges toward it, all of her impulses to turn around and run screaming in the other direction. But she thinks she can handle it-- she’s strong enough now. She can do this. 

She has to do this. 

Rinoa wills herself closer to the edge of the cliff, and doesn’t let herself think before she falls. 

It’s like diving into boiling ink, a swirling chaos of black and burgundy and midnight blue, but nothing she can grasp, no light reflecting on any surface to tell her which way is up. Her hair floats loose around her, sticking to her cheeks, lips, falling in her eyes, and her fingers make eddies and ripples in the colors as she lifts one hand in front of her to wave it _away_ , back into some kind of order. The air-- if it is air, nothing is taken for granted here-- that she breathes in smells like lightning strikes and dust, and the barest tinge of copper. She tries to will it into solidity, tries to force the tempest around her to coalesce into something she can stand on, tries--   
  
_\-- fails_. 

She’s falling, sinking, drawn downward by a leaden weight attached to her left wrist. Her bracelet, she realizes too late-- the slim band of silvery metal locking her own powers away and leaving her helpless to the riptide of Ellone’s uncontrolled magic. The copper taste in her mouth strengthens, morphs to what she now recognizes as blood, and she feels like she’s falling faster as the swirling colors deepen into opaque jet black.

Something clutches around her fingers, something scrabbles at the bangle, attempting to rip it free, somewhere, somewhere deep in the ink-dark nowhere, _something_ mouths her name. 

Desperately, Rinoa flails in the direction she thinks is still up, reaches her other hand out for _anything_ to hold on to, legs thrashing, pulling against whatever has her wrist-- 

A black-gloved hand closes around her own, and Squall hauls her out of the morass and back into the infirmary. The link between them is faded and tenuous, but for just a moment, it had been enough.

Rinoa shoves away from him, collapsing to the floor, chest heaving, breath frantic, eyes wide, every muscle in her body tensed in fear. She wants to cry, wants to howl, wants to run outside and fall onto the grass in the morning sun, but her legs refuse to obey. 

So, she stays there, face-first on the linoleum, screaming until her throat is raw. 

It takes a solid ten minutes before she runs out of sounds to make, rasps in place of screams, before she can move again, ten further minutes of her head on Edea’s knee and the older woman’s long fingers petting her hair, Squall holding one of her hands and Seifer the other, Rinoa trying to pace her breathing, to still her shaking limbs. Finally, she coughs weakly and sighs.

“Okay. First round-- magic one, me zero,” she says with a shaky, scratchy laugh, prompting a surprised snort from Seifer and a fond sigh from Edea. 

“Scared m-- us for a second there,” Squall tells her. She wonders how he’d been able to reach her at all in there, if it had been the magic moving him for a second-- the _Knight_ still in his head, dormant until it had a job to do, then taking over his body until that job was done.   
  
“Sorry,” she says. They keep saying that word, bouncing it back and forth like a damn tennis ball.

“Are you going to be okay?” 

Rinoa thinks she must have really been out of it-- she hadn’t even heard Quistis come in. She ponders the genuine-sounding worry in the blonde’s voice for a brief moment, but she’s still too rattled to dig further. 

“Define _okay_ ,” she responds, a wry little smile playing around her lips, and she opens her eyes and tries to sit up straight. She breathes deep and forks her fingers through her sweat-damped hair to push it away from her face.

Maybe it’s time to hack all of it off. 

“Which definition from which dictionary?” Quistis’ voice is deadpan, but when Rinoa looks over at her there’s a tiny smile on her face, something like a joke, something like a question that has nothing to do with vocabulary. Rinoa huffs and returns the smile as best she can. It feels like it doesn’t fit on her face, though, stilted and unsure.   
  
“Whichever one means not okay at all,” she says, leaning back against Edea’s legs, finally reaching for the little paper cup of water she hadn’t been able to hold onto until now, hands unwilling to obey simple instructions. God, her throat hurts, words like knives as they trip up onto her tongue. “Whatever’s in Elle’s head, it’s not friendly. I… honestly, I don’t even know if she’s walking in her _own_ dreams right now.” It hangs in the air for a moment, and then Quistis breathes in sharply.   
  
“Do you remember--” 

“Back then.” Squall looks between her and Rinoa, nodding, and Rinoa makes a quiet noise of agreement. 

“But it’s like… it’s like someone else is doing it _to_ her, using her own powers against her. I almost wonder--” She breaks off, looking up at Edea again. “It is possible… I know she told me once that sometimes she meets others, in the Stream. Could someone have…” She trails off, not wanting to give voice to the thought. 

She remembers, once upon a time, her horror at realizing what Ultimecia had intended to do to Ellone. To be used-- not just possessed, but _used--_ to collapse the universe, to attack everything she’d ever known or loved… Rinoa had thought, then, that as awful as being used to release Adel had been, she had escaped the worst of Ultimecia’s plots. 

She hates to think that someone else might try that again. 

\--

Eventually, upright happens, on her own two feet without need of aid or companion-- she needs to go somewhere _else_ , anywhere else but in that tiny corridor between all those beds and too many people, and they all agree to try again after dinner. She makes it all of five yards down the hall before Seifer’s hand latches around her wrist, startling her with its sudden warmth.

“Rin-- shit, sorry,” he fumbles, tripping over his own words, and Rinoa doesn’t want to know what he sees in her face, in her eyes. She forces herself to relax, by degrees if nothing else; it must almost work, because something in his broad shoulders eases just slightly as he lets go of her arm to touch her cheek gently. 

There is a slight flinch at the contact. His eyes narrow in concern. 

“You okay?” 

A very brief shake of her head. 

“What can I do?” 

Later, she’ll try to suss out what about that question makes her snap, hands coming up into the front of his shirt, dragging Seifer’s face down to hers, crushing their mouths together without trying to explain herself at all. 

She needs to feel something, anything, other than the oppressive dark and nameless horror, other than the echoes of her knighting still throbbing in her chest, a scar torn open thirty years later. He’ll understand-- it is not a new coping mechanism for either of them. There is a janitorial closet two doors down, she knows, and by some miracle, they’ve still not bothered to lock it against moments like this, even decades later. 

Whether that’s deliberate or not, she doesn’t care at all, pulling him inside with her into the dark, crashing into shelves and sending neatly arranged bottles and cans and rags knocking around, falling at their feet. 

“ _Rin--”_

He barely gets the door closed before she’s got her shirt off, thrown to the side, hands falling on his belt. He’s solid and warm under her touch, something tangible, something _real_ , and it’s the only thing she can imagine needing in this instant.

“Shut _up_ ,” she demands, and for once in his life, Seifer Almasy complies. 

It’s a goddamned miracle. 

Afterward, she is left sore and strangely empty, skin warmed by his touch and mouth and body pressed against hers, sitting on the floor in the dark among the cleaning supplies. 

“I can’t go back in there alone,” she finally whispers, because it needs to be said. 

He kisses the crown of her head, and lets his chin come to rest there, a safe haven. Warm-dark, tucked against him with limbs tangled and half their clothes thrown aside. Warm-dark; she pretends she doesn’t see phantom fingers reaching out from the shadows that play on the back of the door. 

“You won’t be alone,” Seifer murmurs, and Rinoa is so very tired of men making promises to her that they aren’t going to be able to keep.


	5. Chapter 5

Rinoa spends the next several hours in her room, face down in a novel she’d brought with her. She feels like she needs to fill her mind again, like there are empty spaces between her ears where the swirling darkness came back with her. She gets up, makes a second cup of tea, and sits right back down under the window, leaning against the cool white wall with her book perched on her knees, letting the story fill the dark places in her skull.

Somewhere around mid-afternoon, her stomach lets her know very firmly that she needs to consume more than tea at some point, and she sets the book down, marking her spot with a scrap of Garden-branded stationary that had been left on the table. Unless they’ve changed something drastic, she thinks she should still be able to make her way from the dorms to the cafeteria. Maybe she’ll take the long way around.

She wonders, out of nowhere, if they’ll have hot dogs.

It’s louder now, more students strolling through the corridors, talking between themselves about tests and homework, spells and weapons, crushes and breakups and stolen kisses in the Training Center. She smiles a little bit at the last - some things, apparently, would never _ever_ change. 

She runs into Quistis outside the Library with a stack of papers in her arms. Rinoa knows her official title is Principal now, that she runs the academic side of Garden, so she supposes it makes sense. Rinoa can’t count the number of times she’d watched Quistis striding through these halls, arms full of exams or reports, back when this was her home as well.  
  
“Hey,” she says simply, and the smile feels slightly less paper-thin this time. Maybe it gets easier with repetition, she thinks, once familiarity wears the sharp edges off the pain.

“Hey yourself,” Quistis responds, her answering smile slightly lopsided. “Lost track of you for a little while there.” Her posture is relaxed, effortlessly confident, and once upon a time Rinoa might have felt small next to her.

Quistis is now the queen in the castle, but Rinoa is the enchantress in the forest.  
  
“Yeah, I needed some me time,” Rinoa says with a slight shrug, conveniently skipping over the twenty minutes of us-time in the supply closet. “This morning… kind of took a lot out of me.”

“I could tell.” She nods slowly, the overhead lights briefly glaring on the lenses of her glasses-- thicker now than they were back then, Rinoa notices. “We really were worried about--”  
  
“Mom!” 

Quistis’s head snaps around to look to her right, and Rinoa instinctively follows her gaze-- and freezes, feeling solid ice right down to her bones.

She’s known Alexander Leonhart _exists-_ \- she’d gotten the simple announcement in the mail something-teen years ago, a name and date, inches, pounds. The few people who know the Garden-related chapter of her story know why she may not want to hear about this particular child, and so don’t mention it. 

She now sort of wishes someone had, because but for the wire-rim glasses and the lack of a slanting scar, she could _swear_ that a young Squall is running toward them right now.

The smile no longer fits on her face-- Rinoa forces it to stay there. It’s been years. What was she expecting? That Squall would renounce his life and become a monk, holding a torch for her forever? She hadn’t exactly been a beacon of purity in the ensuing years. She has no place to judge.

He’s happy. Quistis is happy. Everyone is happy. 

Right? 

“Alex, slow down, you know the rules.” But there’s no biting order in Quistis’ voice, even as the teenager does as she asks, coming to a stop. Up close, he’s not quite the duplicate of his father, but the similarities are there, too obvious to ignore. 

“Did you get it?” he asks, after a glance at Rinoa that finds her not nearly as interesting as whatever Quistis has. 

“That depends. What’d you get on the exam?” 

He opens his notebook, and pulls out a printed sheet. “Perfect score. I told you I would.” 

Quistis takes it, holds it closer to read it-- practically has to look over the rims of her glasses to do so, Rinoa notes, and it’s something, at least, one tiny flaw to hold onto-- and smiles wider. “In that case...” The sheaf of papers is shifted from one arm to the other, so she can reach into her bag, coming up with a foil booster package of Triple Triad cards. 

“ _Yes!”_ Alexander crows, grabbing it out of her hands and already pulling open the pack, trash absently stuffed in his pocket as he flips through the cards. It must be good (Rinoa’s face hurts from forcing the polite smile this long), because he cheers again, and throws a one-armed hug around his mother’s shoulders, calling, “ _Thank you!”_ back at her as he turns to disappear back into the river of cadets, one more black uniformed fish in a swarm of hundreds, gone before Rinoa can blink. 

The smile is frozen on Rinoa’s face, feeling like it’s stuck that way, as Quistis sighs and chuckles and turns her attention back to her. 

“You’d think eventually that game would go out of fashion,” she laughs. “I apologize. He’s very enthusiastic.” 

“He’s... he certainly is,” and _god_ , she feels momentarily pathetic, trying to think of anything else to say. _He looks so much like his father_. 

But the words hurt too much in her chest, never making it to her tongue-- thankfully, the phone at Quistis’ hip buzzes loudly, saving Rinoa from having to say anything at all. 

“You’re busy,” she exhales. “I’ll just-- I’m going to go.” 

And she turns and flees into the crowd just as quickly as Alexander had, leaving Quistis baffled in her wake. 

The cafeteria, at least, is large and loud enough to be entirely anonymous for the time it takes her to pay for a wrapped sandwich and a plastic tub of pre-portioned salad, her interaction with the cafeteria worker only long enough to trade a bill for a handful of change. 

It’s almost too easy to follow the shortcut from the cafeteria’s outdoor exit to the dorms, back to her borrowed room, back into her borrowed bed with the food abandoned on the desk nearby. The mattress creaks slightly as she rolls onto her back, staring out the window just above her head. 

It’s a nice day, all things considered. Why shouldn’t it be, here in perfect sunny Balamb, where everyone works hard and gets everything they want? 

_Bitter, much?_

She sighs and lets one arm flop over her face, blocking out both the sun and the inset ceiling lights. Memories are less easy to block, no matter how she tries.

_A body that’s found a new way to fail her, the stench of blood and sweat, aftershocks of pain rippling through her abdomen. An deep, unnatural silence._

_A baby girl born sleeping, placed unmoving but still warm in her arms. A tiny button nose, a shock of dark hair, ten tiny fingers that do not curl around one of her own. A nursery, a cradle, her heart, all empty._

_A coffin barely longer than her arm, a gravestone on the edge of the cemetery in Timber, a shooting star and the name they’d decided on for her, Celeste Almasy, carved into its face._

Rinoa curls into herself on top of the bed covers.  
  
She’s not even a little bit hungry anymore.

\--

It’s getting darker, the further she walks. 

She’s tried every direction, because _one_ of them has to point back to home, back to her comfortable flat in Esthar with its beautifully soft bed, back to her _body_ , abandoned for what feels like days now. 

There’s no way to tell, no light that guides her home. So, all she can do is walk, further and further into further beyond. 

_I’m not afraid_. 

She should have made the safer trip, the predictable dreams of friends, neighbors, her father, Laguna’s sleep mild and only vaguely bizarre, save for when she accidentally walks into that Deling Hotel piano bar. _That’s_ a dream Ellone makes an immediate u-turn at, back the way she came. 

She’s singing what few lines of that song she can remember without realizing that she’s doing it, at first, a warbled, _do you know I had my eyes on you_ , off-key and loud, trying to break through the _dark_ , but it still pushes down, pushes her small, pushes her voice back into her throat. 

Something out there has its eyes on her. 

Ellone is certain of that. 


	6. Chapter 6

The rest of the day goes on, daylight giving into twilight into sunset. The cold cuts go warm and soggy, the salad wilts. Rinoa stays on the bed for as long as she can stand, until her phone starts chiming. The first call goes to voicemail. So does the second. 

The third, she answers. 

“I’m coming,” she croaks, voice rough, and hangs up before Seifer can follow up on that. 

Dinner is long since over by the time she showers and dresses, the cacophony of noise that comprises Garden’s student body mostly streaming _away_ from the cafeteria. Her stomach rumbles, and she wastes more money in the commissary, pumping a handful of change into the vending machine for a cheap pastry and a bottle of something purporting to be iced tea. It is neither over ice, nor tea, but she’s willing to forgive it that much, since it washes down the sweet-nothing taste of her food. 

The wrapper gets dropped in a trash bin, the tea carries her the whole way through to the infirmary, where Kadowaki is busy switching several of the machines to battery power, unhooking Ellone from what needs to still be plugged in. 

“Got a squad coming back from Trabia,” she says by way of explanation. “I need the space. We’re setting her up in one of the dorms.” 

Rinoa nods. “Do you need help?” She’ll leave it up to Lena to decide with what. It would be so much simpler to turn down another attempt at rooting through Ellone’s nightmare in favor of being up to her elbows in blood and guts. 

She hasn’t done anything beyond the barest edge of first aid in years, but she doesn’t doubt it’ll be too much like riding a bike. 

However, Dr. Kadowaki dashes her hopes, shaking her head as she reaches to unlock the brakes on Ellone’s bed, guiding it a few feet out of the alcove to get to the outlets behind it. 

“I’d be lying if I said no, but I’ve got enough trainees to get us through the worst of it. The commander’s already asked for you twice.” 

“He could have called.”   
  
Kadowaki shrugs. “Not my business to tell him what to do, Rinoa. Grab that monitor and watch the cable-- the support hook’s broken and no one’s had time to fix it.” 

She does as she’s asked, trying not to look at Ellone’s pale, sleeping face, her dark hair shorter than Rinoa remembers her having it, almost a pixie that splashes brown across her forehead, shiny with unwashed grease. 

At least the dorms offer slightly more privacy, Rinoa thinks as she helps Kadowaki set up the last of the machines, making sure the cables don’t tangle or crimp, trying to keep them from crossing over Ellone’s face. It’s been decades since she had to handle Garden’s medical equipment, but she remembers enough to keep the wires out of her patient’s face and hook the oxygen and IV into the right ports. 

It isn’t until they’ve almost finished setting everything back up that she realizes Ellone’s borrowed room is right next to hers. 

Kadowaki leaves for a moment to go track down Squall, and Rinoa’s alone in the room with Ellone, the machines, and her memories. The heart monitor beeps at too slow a pace for comfort, the oxygen hisses through the tubing, and Rinoa swears she can _hear_ the surging boil of magic under Ellone’s skin if she tries hard enough. She sighs and moves to the window, looking down on the forest spreading to the north of Garden. 

_The magic is screaming in her head before the emergency convoy even gets there, meeting the transports carrying the triage patients halfway-- a mission gone horrifically wrong, is all the comms tell them, bring as much of the med bay as you can and get here NOW._

_The magic lets her know that at least part of the reason for this urgency is that Squall’s among the wounded, all static under her skin, everything in her screaming ‘go to him go to him GO TO HIM--’_ _  
_ _  
_ _She jumps off the ramp as soon as she can physically fit through, lets one of her field medics pull her up into a bay that smells of blood and burnt flesh, gunpowder, vomit. She doesn’t have to ask which way to go - the magnet pull in her gut toward the gurney in the corner is too strong to ignore._ _  
_ _  
_ I’m here, I’m here, it’s alright, I’m here, _she whispers through their bond-- he’s already fuzzy under the weight of pain and the haze of medication, and she almost loses her cool when she sees the mass of blood-soaked bandages on the left side of his face._

‘Noa? _Even his thoughts are slurred as she reaches his side, the field team moving to give her space, and she feels the magic surge its way out of her body and into his. The static pinpricks under her skin fade as he starts to breathe easier-- Source magic asks a high price of its servants, but it is oddly protective of its own._ _  
_ _  
_ It’ll be okay, _she says, not entirely sure if she’s lying or not. The rest of the emergency team is here now, the air filled with shouts and machine beeps, the cold night air from outside mixing with the heavy atmosphere in the bay. She pushes comfort, warmth,_ love _through their bond, the knowledge that they’re together now and that will make everything alright._

Yeah. _He sounds stronger now, more of exhaustion than weakness pulling him into unconsciousness._ Help the others, they’re hurt, too…

Will do. Love you. _She doesn’t have the heart to tell him now that she already knows Zell’s gone, lost to them before the transports even left, or that everything she knows about head injuries means she’s only got the barest hope of keeping Xu alive. Later, when he’s healing. Not now._

_Now she has a job to do._

She shakes her head and turns away from the window. She’d had a job, and she’d failed. She remembers hour after hour that night, first in the convoys and then in the operating room, uphill battle after uphill battle for her friends’ lives. She remembers pulling the covers up over Elise’s face, the knowledge that Sarah Dincht was now the newest orphan under Garden’s care sitting like bricks in her stomach.

She remembers Kadowaki’s hand on her shoulder like a lead weight two days later, a flip of a switch, and falling to her knees in despair and guilt as the bank of monitors around Selphie flatlined. 

She’s thought for a long time that that night had been the beginning of the end. The point where “happy” and “ever” started draining away, leaving her with nothing but “after”.

She failed then. She can’t fail now.

\--

The edge of the cliff is there, so close that all it takes is one step or one good shove for her to go over it again, and Rinoa still hesitates, afraid of what waits for her below. 

“--No,” she says abruptly, pushing up off the hard sofa, away from Quistis. “No, this is a bad idea.” 

“Rinoa...” Squall’s voice is exasperated, and maybe Seifer was _right_ , maybe Rinoa _should_ charge him if he’s going to keep trying to use her like this. “Please. It’s better to practice than just go in blind again. What if we can’t pull you out?” 

Again. 

He doesn’t need to say it, Rinoa feels the word and the fear behind it rushing down their bond, tension in that little red string that stretches taut between them. Oh, to have a pair of very sharp scissors in her hand, enough to sever it for good. 

“ _You_ don’t know what I saw,” she reminds him sharply, stabbing a finger against his chest. She’s eaten a whole half a meal since she’d gotten to Garden, and whether the headache that’s building behind her temples is the result of that, or being forced to stand in narrow quarters with her ex. RInoa isn’t sure.

“I know enough,” he shoots back, and she _feels_ Quistis move, like she’s preparing to get up and put herself between the two of them if needed. “You think I _like_ sending you in there basically defenseless?” 

_"Defenseless?!"_

The outrage takes over her face, and Rinoa doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream, shoving her left arm in his face, thin bracelet shaking around thinner wrist. “I have spent more than _half my life_ under lock and key in some way or another because I’m too dangerous to let back out into polite society otherwise, and you tell me that you think I can’t _handle_ myself? Maybe I just don’t want to root around in _your wife’s_ brain!” 

Her voice is shrill, a childish outburst; the silence that follows is eerily still. 

“Rin--” Quistis, sighing, _does_ shift forward on the sofa, coming to her feet after a moment. “You need to practice on someone, and I’m the only one of us who hasn’t been possessed or knighted--” 

Oh, well, in for a gil-- she whirls away from Squall and pushes past Quistis. There’s nowhere to _go_ once she hits the door, but she’ll settle for a half-dozen feet away from both of them. 

“Right, you’re normal. Yeah. I get that. Why don’t we just get _Xu_ down here or something? She hates me, but at least she’s honest about it.” 

Rinoa shoves her hair out of her face, yanking it back into a twist before she realizes that she has nothing to hold it in place with, storming around the narrow counter that splits the room in half to scrounge up a pencil or a rubber band or _something_ \-- 

There’s nothing, because it’s an empty dorm. No one lives here. She slams shut the one drawer, and leans against the counter, face coming to rest in her hands. 

“Rinoa,” Quistis, _again_ , because she’s just too stubborn to know when to back the hell off, closer than Rinoa would like right now. Her gaze flicks up between her fingers only slightly, to the hand outstretched in front of her, holding a blue hair tie like the proverbial olive branch. “Here.” 

She lets her fingers slide down her cheeks, until her forearms come to rest against the countertop as well, palm up, a landing pad for the tie to hit. Quistis drops it gently. 

“Thanks.” It comes out curtly. She still bundles her hair back up, wrapping the tie around the thick bun twice to keep most of it out of her face and off her neck. The apology sticks in her throat; she forces it out, and shoves the irrational jealousy back down in its place. “I shouldn’t have said that.” 

Shouldn’t have done a lot of things, most of them starting with agreeing to take the ticket Squall paid for, and come back here at all. 

Quistis shrugs, a brief elegant motion. “It’s alright. I would probably feel the same way, in your position.” 

Rinoa can’t really come up with an easy response to that-- too many emotions, bubbling too close to the surface, a storm under her own skin-- so she just nods and holds eye contact for a moment. Quistis’ eyes are still the same cool, clear blue, slightly unfocused without her glasses on, but there’s a kindness there, an offer of understanding.

She’ll take it, for now. 

“Try again?” she says after a moment, and Quistis nods. 

It’s less frightening to jump this time, to take that deep breath and final step. Instead of ink and copper and terror, she’s floating in a world of pumpkin orange, burnished gold shimmer, the scent of verbena and expensive imported coffee. The only emotion she can pick out is a slim thread of nervousness, trepidation, anxiety-- Quistis isn’t entirely sure she’s comfortable with Rinoa rooting around in her memories either, it seems. 

The swirls of copper shine and burnt orange solidify easily, and Rinoa is standing in what appears to be a library. She can’t help an amused smile-- of course, Quistis with her well-honed mind and decades of Garden-instilled discipline, of course she keeps her thoughts and memories well-organized and catalogued. 

Rinoa walks past the shelves about Squall, Alexander, Xu… this one says “books”, and she thinks that’s about as likely as anything to be a safe topic to explore. Maybe there’s something they’ve both read, some overlap, some common ground. But before she can pull one down, she hears a painfully familiar giggle, looks to her left, sees-- 

_Selphie is laughing, auburn hair bouncing around her face as she flops dramatically across Quistis and Rinoa’s legs. They’re squeezed onto the battered couch in Selphie’s dorm room, something salvaged from a yard sale in town and smuggled up to the dorms with a dozen Float spells, but it’s comfortable and soft and just the right size for three girls squished shoulder to shoulder. Rinoa has her feet up on the coffee table, and there’s some long-forgotten movie playing on the TV on the other side of the room. Quistis grins, wide and carefree, leaning her head against Rinoa’s shoulder and carding her fingers through Selphie’s hair._

_“Random question,” Selphie says out of nowhere._ _  
_ _  
_ _“Shoot,” Quistis says, as the shorter girl wiggles a little to get Rinoa’s knee out of her back._

 _“Where do you think we’ll be in twenty years or so? When we’re all old and grumpy?”_ _  
_

_Quistis pauses for a moment. She can only think of one answer. “Well, hopefully, right here.”_

_“Hopefully you get a new couch by then,” Rinoa says with a mischievous grin, prompting another sunny laugh as they settle down and watch the rest of the movie._

_They’re together, all of them. Close as sisters. Unbreakable..._

The scene shifts, images fading like fog as she draws closer. 

_The war is over, and the party is winding down, and Quistis kicks off her boots finally, padding barefoot out onto the balcony to get some sort of reprieve from the celebratory high that’s still cloying the air of the ballroom. She’d lost Rinoa and Squall a while ago, swept up in a crowd of well-wishers, important people, judging by the suits and ties and expensive dresses-- she doesn’t doubt that the title of_ commander _won’t come with more fame than he’ll ever want to acknowledge after this._

_The practical stone tiling is a relief against feet sore from dancing on the heels of so much walking, all over the world. She lets her boots drop, hips coming to rest against the railing as Garden continues its flight, back around the way it came, Balamb zooming back into view._

_“Room for one more?” Rinoa asks, coming up beside her. She looks as exhausted as Quistis feels, when she glances over with eyes red from either champagne or weariness or the contacts that have probably permanently stuck themselves to her pupils. It occurs to her belatedly that she doesn’t know where her glasses have gone, much less the bag that’d had her few essentials before Ultimecia had tried to squeeze them all out of existence._

_Quistis closes her eyes, trying to ease the uncomfortable dryness. She’s going to need a chisel to get the contacts off at this point. Xu was right-- should have shelled out for corrective surgery when she had the chance._

_“For you? I don’t know. Maybe,” she teases, before Rinoa can take her silence as something offensive, and is met with a tired, giggly grin. Rinoa has had her fair share of champagne-- but so has Quistis, if she’s being honest._

_“I don’t know what to do after this, y’know? Like, when we land, am I just supposed to get on a train and go back to Timber?”_

_She hadn’t thought about that; Rinoa had gone from client to friend to family over the past year that it’s impossible to picture days without her._

_Quistis shifts, bumping her shoulder against Rinoa’s lightly. “You’re not leaving us so soon, are you?”_

_“Maybe I’ll stick around for a while. I could stand to live by the beach, I think.”_

_“Well, if you can’t find an apartment, I have a not-very-comfortable sofa you’re welcome to crash on.”_

_They laugh at that-- anything even remotely soft will be better than tents and sleeping bags and the hard ground that seeps away all one’s body heat in the still of the night, a drastic change from Rinoa’s big pink bed with its drapes and frippery._

_“I’ll keep you posted.”_

_She sees more of Garden’s landing site now, a brown expanse amidst the green grass, outbuildings dotted around, an asphalt airstrip with a helicopter sat on it, the winding road that leads down into what Balamb maintains is a whole_ town _, despite its microscopic size._

_“You know, if you stay here, you’ll probably be bored to tears within a week.”_

_“Yeah, probably. But I’m sure I could amuse myself for a while. Maybe I’ll sign up with you guys, become a mercenary!”_

_“You’ll have to talk to the commander about that,” Quistis laughs, and the silence that follows isn’t awkward at all, comfortable and serene._

_She and Quistis stay there, close as sisters, as Garden descends, the ground rushing up to meet them._

The memory fades away like smoke-- before she can stop it, another one opens up too quickly, and the library dissolves into a chapel, into Squall in a tuxedo standing at the head of a long aisle, and she knows she’s looking out through Quistis’ eyes, because _their_ wedding had been outdoors, in a field in Timber with the sun streaming down. 

Rinoa turns away, heart heavy in her chest, and walks back the way she came. 

She opens her eyes into her borrowed dorm room, fluorescent lights, the last bits of sunset light disappearing from the window beside her. She looks up into Quistis’s face as the other woman shakes herself fully conscious again - to her right, relief replaces the quiet worry flowing through her bond with Squall - and both of them take a deep, shuddering breath in unison.

“Good?” Quistis says, just above a whisper. 

“I… I don’t know,” Rinoa replies with a sad little shake of her head. “I can’t control it. I’m there, it’s safe, I’m not in danger, but I can’t control anything - I only see what you’re remembering, I think.” 

“What I-- oh.” Quistis looks down, away from Rinoa, a quick shadow of something wistful and sad passing over her face. 

“...I miss us, too, sometimes.” Rinoa’s voice is barely above a breath-- a confession she didn’t really intend to make, but the words come out seemingly of their own volition. Quistis looks back up, holds her gaze for a moment that stretches to several, nods her head with the tiniest little half smile.   
  
It’s not much, it’ll never be what it once was, but it’s enough. She’ll take it.

“I wonder why you can’t control it,” Quistis says eventually, her tone thoughtful. “From what I remember back then, Elle was able to pick and choose whatever--” She cuts off, blue eyes focusing and sharp, then reaches out to take Rinoa’s hand.

The silver bangle on her left wrist glints in the artificial overhead lighting as Quistis raises their joined hands.


	7. Chapter 7

There is one key to the bangle on Garden’s property, and it’s locked in Kadowaki’s emergency cabinet, the one that requires her passcode and a thumbprint to open (there is a second, in Squall’s desk at what was once their home, but neither of them point that out. It seems better left unsaid, better _forgotten_. 

The doctor holds Rinoa’s arm steady, key slid into the narrow, horizontal lock, where it will complete a circuit and set her free, looking down her nose at her. “You’re sure about this? I can sedate you if you want. I don’t know what the magic’s going to do after being held back for so long.” 

Rinoa appreciates the practical straightforwardness of her concerns (this is undoubtedly one of those scenarios that she _doesn’t_ have a stick of experience to measure by) and glances over the doctor’s shoulder at Squall, who is close enough to touch, Quistis just adjacent. 

Seifer is right at her side, though, one broad hand on her shoulder, a lightning rod for whatever might come charging out of her. Reckless as always, willing to fling himself right into the fray, even if knowing her luck, she’ll probably give him a heart attack. But the warmth of his touch is comforting, moreso, curiously, than Squall’s narrowed, serious gaze; she feels his concern, thrumming palpably along that thin thread between them, the connection growing more potent the longer they are together. 

She doesn’t _want_ to think about what will happen when Kadowaki unlocks the bangle. 

Her right hand curls tightly around the edge of the examination table, feeling the magic pulse wildly beneath her skin, like a trapped bird. It hasn’t been this excited for _decades_ , not since the war, not since it was first shoved into her bones and she’d had to fight to get it under control. 

But she is older now, she _knows_ this magic, better than she knows herself most days. 

Rinoa inhales, holds it for a second, exhales. 

“Do it.” 

\--

It’s following her. 

She hears the scratches, like claws on steel, _feels_ the heaviness of a shadow at her back. (Don’t turn around, don’t let it see your face, don’t let it look into your eyes.)

It’s following her, dragging a curtain of dark and ash, the lightning strikes the only color still left in the sky, and eventually even those fade, gone behind something like cloud cover, but Ellone knows it’s much, much worse than simply a storm. . 

The forest springs up around her as she continues on, scrabbles of dead trees that turn into looming tall things, demented branches clawing at her face, her arms, her eyes, the trees every monster she’s ever thought she’s seen in the shadows. This is its home, she knows, this is where it’s waited for her for so long, sharpening its teeth and claws. 

Ellone forces herself to shrink as she is confronted with a thicket blocking the only path she can see, hands feeling so small against the brambles, the thorns, that she feels like a child again, lost, afraid. All children are afraid of something, and sometimes those invisible beasts don’t disappear with the wisdom of adulthood. 

Sometimes, they stay, and grow, and wait. 

It’s following her.

Her hands shake, her legs don’t want to work-- she wants to turn and run, run back into the light of day. A thorn bites cruelly into her palm; when her sob comes out, it is young and pained and scared. 

(You’re not going to be able to run fast enough.)

She thinks of her brother, confident, brave, even with all the scars over his face and body, so much damage it makes her want to weep. How is he so _strong_ , after all he’s been through? How can he stand on his own feet, when there are things like this that hide in the dark, things that reach out, ready to snatch her up, to devour her whole? 

_I want to go home_ , she whimpers, peeling back another rope of branches, rewarded with blood coursing down from her fingers for the effort. 

It’s following her, and it is very, very hungry. 

\--

“--are you feeling?” 

From far away, she hears the words, but they’re meaningless, distant echoes in a sea of endless stars, galaxies unfolding. Her hands course through them, drawing trails of light with every swish and pass of her fingers, scattering the sounds of a man’s voice like discordant notes, the wrong keys struck in the music of the universe; the world spins a lazy path close enough to touch. She draws in a deep breath, stardust and stellar gases filling her lungs, her blood, her bones. She wonders if she can cup the planet in her hands, hold it, make it her own. Claim it. Protect it. 

Rinoa reaches out--

Seifer snaps his fingers in front of her face, three sharp cracks that break through the expanse. “Hey. Princess. Look at me.” 

Rinoa blinks, startled, her eyes focusing on the vision-test chart behind the doctor’s shoulder, of all things, and the illusion of space, time, dimensions she doesn’t even have names for fades away. In its place is--   
  
Is the sudden, sharp rush of thirty years’ worth of emotion through the bond between her and Squall, as the magic forces open a pathway they’d agreed to block off as completely as humanly possible. Yearning, fury, grief, loneliness, worry - a rush in her ears like Ragnarok’s engines on takeoff, so long ago, the force of it making her gasp, and then… quiet. A careful, precise kind of quiet, of carefully chosen words, of deliberate actions, a quiet that tries to walk on broken glass without drawing blood. 

It’s not quiet for long, though-- the magic within her has always been a boisterous, energetic thing, something she once likened to an eternal puppy, back before thoughts of dogs led to thoughts of sorrow. And after so long locked away from her, so long kept caged away from her mind, that energy feels absolutely limitless.

But so too, she finds, does its rage. 

_BETRAYED!_ It screams inside her head, more wolf than pup, all teeth and claws and sinew. She stands in a dark space, lit only by starlight and the burning fury within the beast that stalks beside her. _Betrayed! Abandoned! Pain for pain! We will have vengeance!_

 _No._ She says it simply, but the word carries the iron strength of her will. She’s had to do this before-- never with this kind of anger, never with this frenetic energy behind it, but she’s had to do it before and she’s done it _damn well_ before. There would be several fewer mountains in Trabia if she hadn’t.

 _Turncoats! Usurpers!_ Still it rages, quieter but no less angry. _Take our vengeance! Kill maim destroy AVENGE--_

 _NO!_ The iron in her mind turns into bands of steel (of silver, of Odine’s mysterious little alloy) that wrap themselves around the specter of the wolf in her mind, and she watches it struggle for a moment. _I am the one in charge here, in case you’ve forgotten._ There’s a sound like a puppy’s whine, and the figment changes, morphs, shrinks, shifts into something less of fury and more of quiet resentment. The light returns, the space around her more grey than black, less a featureless void and more a large plain, mountains barely visible in the distance. She squats down in front of it, eye level, looking into a canine face made of starlight and eyes like condensed galaxies. _Will you behave if I let you out?_ _  
_

_...yes?_

_Promise?_

_...yes._ The bands loosen, relaxing just enough to let the now-docile creature out, and it comes to heel by her feet as she stands. _little vengeance?_ she hears it ask, following its eyes over to where she now sees Squall standing a few meters away. _memories of the other one? make him uncomfortable?_ Rinoa does not have to wonder precisely which memories it refers to - she’s somewhat spoiled for choice there, honestly - and Squall’s face twists slightly as he realizes just what the little canine is referring to. 

“Not unless I have a reason to,” she says out loud, addressing both of them. 

“I try not to think about her, you try not to think about him, we call it even?” His tone is far too matter-of-fact for someone standing inside a magical projection of his ex-wife’s mind, and Rinoa huffs a laugh, eyebrows lifting whimsically. 

“Sounds like as good a plan as anything I’ve got,” she says, and they fall silent for a moment. It’s hard to know what to say, she thinks, after this long, and with no option of lying to each other. She tries to think of something safe to lead off with. “How’s Irvine been? I haven’t seen him around yet,” she says quietly.

“He’s doing well-- he handles most of the PR stuff for me now, actually. Conferences, press releases, things like that. He’s surprisingly good at it, for a guy who could find a dirty joke in just about anything.”  
  
Rinoa laughs at that. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me as much as it should. Gigi?”   
  
“It’s _Giselle_ now, unless you want to get one hell of a right hook to the gut.” Squall’s smile is fond and more than a little proud. “She’s happy. Joined up when she was almost eighteen, specialized in tactics and deployment. Every bit as good as her mother was, if not better-- she and Irvine are actually in Trabia right now, they’re our delegates at a summit with the Shumi.” He pauses, considering his words. “Did... did Sarah ever find you?” he says after a moment, and Rinoa nods with a smile just as affectionate as his own had been. 

“A few weeks after she got to Deling Polytech, yeah. She went to grad school, works for a law firm in the city now-- and yes, every now and then I get a laugh thinking about how Zell would react to his little girl being a lawyer.” She sighs, soft and gentle. “She comes to see me every other month or so-- takes the weekend express down to Timber, packs a whole bunch of reports and files and other business things to read on the ride, and we spend a day or two watching old movies together and eating pizza. She’s happy, too,” she says, then adds quietly, “I’m pretty sure they still write each other letters, you know. Even after this long, they’re family.” 

“Yeah.” He nods, and they lapse into silence again. It’s not as easy as it used to be for her to read him, not even here, but she knows there are things he wants to ask her, but won’t. “Are you ready to go back?” 

She thinks for a moment-- the magic is calmed, a warm fuzzy thing nuzzled against her calf, and the starlight racing under her skin is now only the barest shimmer of heat, the brush of a moth’s wing, the weight of a leaf falling onto her cheek in the woods. She feels balanced. She feels _whole._

“Yeah,” she says, closes her eyes, and--   
  
And opens them into too-bright electric light, the chill of the examination table under her hands, Seifer’s half-panicked blue-green eyes directly in front of her. “Rin-- shit, you scared me,” he says, “you were out for way too long.” She smiles, tries to make it reassuring, but there is, again, a Behemoth in the room, and this one’s stomping on things.

Kadowaki is the first to bring it up. “Rinoa?” she asks-- voice clinical, eyes slightly narrowed, trying not to be suspicious but failing. “What’s something that you really want, right now?” They’re wondering if she’s going to lose it-- if she’s going to grow horns and black feathers, if she’ll suddenly be wearing a black dress cut to her navel and five pounds of purple eyeshadow, if she’ll level Balamb Garden with a thought. It’s so absurdly wrong that she almost laughs out loud. 

Instead, she lets her head fall back, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Honestly...” she says, “that one diner in town, down by the waterfront, do they still do all-night takeout? Because it’s been a _really_ long day, all I’ve had to eat is a sticky bun and two cups of tea, and I could absolutely _murder_ a cheeseburger. Ooh, and do they still do garlic fries?”


	8. Chapter 8

It takes about twenty minutes for Rinoa to convince everyone involved that she’s not going evil, that she has the magic under control (a soft furry thing the size now of a large cat, dozing in the corner of her mind, content to be home). She insists that all she wants is a hot meal, a hotter bubble bath, and about eleven straight hours of sleep, no, really, that’s it. She doesn’t want conquest, doesn’t want power, doesn’t want anything other than a snack and a bath and a nap. Eventually, they at least act like they believe her.

She gets two of the three-- the cheeseburger and fries are just as greasy and unhealthy and wonderful as she remembers, and the chocolate milkshake alongside them is a welcome bonus. The bathwater is just shy of scalding, but it feels so _good_ to just soak the tension out of her muscles, and she draws a little face in the steam on the mirror, just because she can.

Sleep, on the other hand, is elusive. Eventually, with the digital clock on the table reading 1:17 in blocky, garish red numbers, she pushes the blankets away and sits up.  
  
The moon is a misty, indistinct light through the blinds at the window; she knows this room faces out toward the forest, rather than in toward the Quad, and she’s glad of it. She prefers moonlight to the glare of the artificial lights high above the courtyard, prefers the view of trees and fields and ocean to that of concrete and metal. 

Perhaps she was never meant to stay here after all, she thinks.

Balamb has always been warm this time of year; she doesn’t bother finding a sweater in her suitcase, just slips out of her dorm in her nightgown, bare feet silent against the gray carpet that lines the hall. It looks like curfew is still in effect-- she doesn’t encounter anyone on her walk from the dorms to the open space of the Quad, padding down the steps and past the burbling fountain. Some things never change. 

Although, judging by the large, empty space where the stage used to be, some things _do_. She lets her fingers trail along the curved wall, repainted white at some point, the whole area brighter, wider. 

The world, and the time it uses, marches ever onward. She wonders if the ballroom looks the same, or if they’ve repurposed that into something else, too. Rinoa drifts away from the wall, crossing to the railing that looks out over more Garden property, a dozen outbuildings, a fleet of helicopters standing like silent sentinels around the perimeter of the air field. 

Squall certainly hasn’t been idle in his many years as Commander. She’ll give him that. 

Rinoa crosses her arms to lean against the railing; in a fit of whimsy, she changes her mind, and sits instead, hiking up the long skirt of her white nightdress to let her legs dangle in the clean, moving water. 

It’s almost enough to pretend that she’s alone for a while, that everything is as it should be, and she’s been welcomed back with open arms. 

_Almost_ enough. 

“--Hey.” 

Squall’s voice cuts through the quiet, just loud enough as to not startle her. Not that it would have mattered-- she felt him coming. Rinoa kicks her feet a little, sending tiny waves in every direction against the current. 

“Hi.” 

“Mind if I sit?” 

A shrug. “It’s your Garden.” 

He doesn’t say anything to that, and instead lowers himself slowly to the ground, leonine grace still evident in a tired, worn-out body. It occurs to her that there have probably been more jobs, more accidents, more patching-up done by someone else’s capable hands since she left. There’s a thick scar snaking up his calf, she sees, as he pulls off his shoes and socks, folding the latter together and storing them safely inside one of the former before he rolls up the legs of his dark slacks. 

Fastidious to a fault, even so many years later. Onward, and onward, until he comes back in a pine box. 

_“Maybe that’s what you want-- you_ want _to get yourself killed!” She is furious, crying with her anger, frustration, because he won’t let her_ help _him, not in any way that matters-- he still can’t walk on his own two goddamned feet and she’s supposed to just sit idly by, the supportive, sympathetic wife, listening to him groan and sigh and swear and_ hurt _._

_Squall looks at her, his one eye devoid of expression, the other buried under sterile strips of bandage while all those fresh, new wounds scar over, forever darkness on one side, the rest of the world on the other._

_She can’t read him. She can only feel the_ pain _in their connection, everpresent, so it surprises the hell out of her when Squall abruptly lurches, picking up the coffee mug that she’d offered to refill for him, hurling it at the wall._

_It shatters. She watches the brown liquid drip down the pretty blue paint._

_“Maybe they should have had better aim.”_

He shifts uncomfortably next to her; she almost opens her mouth to ask him what’s wrong, and then remembers that for the first time in three decades, they are openly telegraphing their every thought to each other. That’s probably a day he doesn’t particularly want to relive. 

“No, not really,” he answers out loud. “I was just angry. I went so long thinking I was invincible, or invulnerable, at least.” 

“Yeah. I know.” 

The distance between them is close enough to reach across, to touch his arm. Rinoa doesn’t do that, and instead tucks a loose strand of hair that’s escaped its braid back behind her ear just to dispel the motion. 

“Do you think--” she begins.

“So, you and Seifer--?” he says at the same time. They both stop, and he laughs briefly. “Sorry. You go ahead.” 

“No, it’s alright. I know the answer to my question. You finish yours.” 

He shrugs, leaning forward against the railing. “I didn’t know you guys were together.” 

“We’re not. Not really. Not for a while, now.” Occasionally, he comes to Timber, or she runs off to Centra for a weekend, or they meet up in Deling, just for old time’s sake. “He’s loyal.” God, that makes him sound like a dog. Rinoa shakes her head, tries again. “He was there for me, when I left Balamb. He’s a good friend.” 

That she still sleeps with on occasion. That she almost had a family with. That she has a running joke of, _you’re gonna need to propose to me at least one more time before I accept,_ with. 

That she keeps at arm’s length, because she can’t stand to be burned again. 

Seifer Almasy is a constant, wild and unpredictable as he once was. He’s about the only thing left in her life, besides the magic in her bones, that _is._

Why is she trying to explain this? It isn’t any of his business. 

(the drowsy celestial puppy in her head thumps its tail on the ground. _a little vengeance. a little guilt.)_

Rinoa kicks her feet again, and sighs. “It’s uncomplicated, I guess.” 

“I get that.” He doesn’t offer up a similar romantic analogy. For that, she’s grateful. She and Quistis were friends, once, and it probably makes her a hypocrite to be willing to talk about Seifer, when she doesn’t want to hear about _her_. 

“I met Alex,” she adds belatedly. “Earlier. He looks a lot like you.” His answering smile is easier, more natural than just about any expression she’s seen on him in the last two days, and the warm rush of pride and love she feels from him at the thought of his son makes half of her want to smile, and the other half want to shrivel. 

“He really does. He’s got his mother’s eyes-- and her eyesight-- but other than that…'' He leans back on his hands, looking up at the statues in the fountain. “He’s a good kid. Smart as hell, loyal to his friends, keeps coming up with new and interesting ways to keep me on my toes.” 

_The sun is going down over the western horizon, and the breeze streams in from over the sea, the scent of brine and seaweed saturating the air and the sound of sailors’ songs drifting in from the moored ships unloading their freight. A man and a little boy sit on one of the docks, two heads of shaggy brown hair tossed by the wind, two pairs of blue eyes looking out over the waves. There are fishing poles in their hands, a cooler with a few silvery fish on ice beside them, a Garden-standard-issue all-terrain parked on a rise a couple dozen meters away._

_“Dad?” the boy says, leaning against his father’s arm. “What’d happen if we got on a boat and sailed into the sun?” The man smiles, shifting slightly to wrap his arm around his son’s shoulders._ _  
__  
__“Hmm. I don’t know, Alex, what do you think would happen?”_ _  
__  
__“I learned the other day that the sun actually stays still, and it’s the planet that turns around, so it only looks like it’s moving. So if we got on a really really fast boat and went that way, would the sun go back up in the sky?”_

_“Depends on how fast the boat is, but it’s possible. I think you’d hit the eastern continent before you got to see it really change, though.”_

_“Does anybody live over there?”_

_“A lot of people do.” The man pauses for a second, then adds quietly, “An old friend of mine lives there, actually.”_

_“Who?”_ _  
__  
__The man shakes his head. “You haven’t met her-- it’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen each other.”_ _  
__  
__“We should go see her, then-- friends shouldn’t be that far apart,” the boy says with the stubborn conviction of youth, and the man sighs._ _  
__  
__“...Maybe someday.”_

“Uh…” Squall scratches the back of his head, looking down at the water again with a wry expression. “Sorry, didn’t mean to--” 

“It’s alright,” Rinoa says gently, leaning against the railing with her chin resting on her forearms. “I’m happy for you,” she says after a long moment-- it comes out sincere, if so, so quiet. “I’m glad you got it right on the second try.”

“Rin…” He sighs, closing his good eye as she looks over her shoulder at him. “I’m sorry, for... For everything, back then.” The words come out slowly at first, and then in a jumble, like they’re tripping over themselves to be spoken. “I didn’t realize just how much--” 

The memory is tiny-- the split-second of emotional overload when their bond had reopened itself-- and she realizes then that instead of the complex mix of his own feelings, he’d gotten _her_ emotions over the last thirty years instead. Her loneliness, her isolation, her bone-crushing grief. 

No wonder he’s apologizing again.

The angel with clipped wings, the knight in tarnished armor. They are no longer who they were, once upon a time, and whatever was between them has been irrevocably changed as well. 

Rinoa can’t quite bring herself to say _it’s alright_ , because really, it’s not, and it hasn’t been for a long time. But she doesn’t have the energy left to be angry about it anymore, not really. Frustrated, yes, awkward, sometimes, but the anger has long since burned itself out.

“We were so damn young,” she says instead, “god, we were just babies back then. We wanted so badly to make it work, didn’t we? And we tried to force it, and it just...” She pushes back from the railing, letting herself lay flat on the cool concrete and staring up at the velvet black of the night sky. “We were doing nothing but hurting each other even more.”

“And neither of us had a damn clue how to handle it.” He leans one elbow against the railing, turning slightly to look at her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have shut you out so badly,” he says simply.  
  
“Maybe I shouldn’t have run so far.” What flows back and forth between them isn’t quite forgiveness-- it’s too soon, the scars are too deep, for it to be that easy-- but it’s something that wants to be. Acknowledgement. Acceptance. 

Grace. 

They stay like that a long time, before, on some unspoken agreement, he stands and offers her a hand up, and they return to their separate rooms. 

\--

She slips through the last of the brambles, scraped up and skin torn, finally stumbling out into a dense puddle of muck and mud that splashes all over what remains of her now-tattered loose pink pajama set, blood- and grime-stained and stuck to her back with sweat. 

Ellone stays on her knees for a second, hands in the mud, breathing hard from the efforts of fighting her way through the forest. Ahead, there is some light, ahead, the trees are starting to open up. 

It may still be following her, but she is _so close_ to safety. 

_Get up_ , she orders herself. _Get up. Run. You gotta run, Ellie._

Up, up she manages, stumbling to her feet, blood dripping freely from torn-up fingertips streaking across her face when she wipes away some of the mud. 

_You gotta run._

But it’s too late. 

She feels a warm breath on the back of her neck, and knows the thing has her. She screws her eyes shut tight, waiting for the pounce that doesn’t come-- it _wants_ her to look at it, it _wants_ her to see the last thing she ever will. 

Her whole body shakes. It takes a great deal of will to issue the command, for her feet to turn in the slick, slippery mud-- _don’t close your eyes_. 

Be brave. 

_I want to go home._

It stands there, taller than she is, a shadow of ink-black, smiling at her with sharp, sharp teeth, a hundred little daggers that are far too white against that black-hole oblivion. Its grin cuts a gruesome slash in the void of _nothing_ that makes up its face, infinite darkness that does not resolve itself into anything like _features--_ it lurches toward her, taking one step closer, then another, closing the last bit of space between them. 

_Mine_ , it seethes. Its tongue stretches out, red and violent, sandpapery dry as it touches her trembling cheek, the sensation making her flesh crawl, making Ellone want to jump out of her skin and bolt. _Mine all mine all mine_. 

Its breath is desert-hot against her skin, a charnel-house rot and the stench of old blood, the dust of ancient bones, the ashes of dead stars, and she almost chokes on the stink.

There is magic there, too, something deep, something ancient. ( _Primordial_ , some last conscious part of her mind helpfully provides, the word bouncing around like a rubber ball in her skull.)

_Mine all mine all mine all mine_

Its jaw unhinges like a snake. Ellone lets out one short, sharp scream. 

The universe goes dark.


	9. Chapter 9

“Well?”

“You were right,” Rinoa says as she opens her eyes. “The bangle was the problem-- I’ve got full control now.”

“Good,” Quistis says, sitting back against the couch cushions. “Out of curiosity, what did you go looking for?”  
  
Rinoa shrugs lightly. “I just asked for something that made you happy-- got the tail end of some kind of shopping trip with Giselle, ice cream sundaes, card games.” A brief grin at that last memory, Quistis’ brow furrowed in annoyance as Giselle beat her _again_ for the fourth game in a five-game set. “I guess you finally found a worthy opponent.” 

Quistis wrinkles her nose and laughs. “What can I say, the kid’s good,” she says, shaking her head. “Can’t say it’s not a little bit embarrassing to have my niece trounce me like that, though.” She pushes off the couch, offering a hand to Rinoa to pull her up after. “Ready?”

Rinoa nods, taking it and standing up next to her. “Ready. Let’s get this done.” Neither of them let go as they leave, heading down the hall hand in hand.

In the twenty-four-ish hours since they discovered that Ellone was not just sick or sleeping, the plan has changed. Multiple times. 

First it was Rinoa, going in on a rescue mission. Then Squall insisted on coming with her, to keep her safe. And then Seifer said he didn’t trust Squall to do it right, so _he_ was going, too. And _then_ Edea gently reminded all of them that she was the only one who had any idea of how to navigate in the Stream, of how to actually find Ellone and get back out afterward, and since she can’t communicate with them from the outside--   
  
So now, they are four. 

Rinoa vaguely wonders if she has time for a run to the liquor store in Balamb before they begin, because she’s going to need a bottle of something sharp and flammable after _this_.

She and Quistis are the last to arrive in the dorm room they’ve converted to a private medical suite. Rinoa smells coffee as soon as they enter, the door closing behind Quistis with a soft click-- the cheap stuff in the cafeteria, of course, and then something expensive with a touch of spice floating on top of the scent-- and then antiseptic, soap, Edea’s perfume under it. 

“-- can’t pretend that I’m completely comfortable with this, Dee,” Kadowaki is saying as the girls walk in. Squall and Seifer are opposite each other at the small round breakfast table, with the two older women sitting close to each other on the far side. Seifer has a half-eaten pastry and a disposable coffee cup in front of him, and Squall holds a mug with a faded, cartoonish image of a moomba on the side. “You’re going to be exposing yourself to forces that you haven’t dealt with in decades, and you’re not nearly as strong as you were then. I--”

“I know, Lena,” Edea says gently, reaching out to take the doctor’s hand. “But there’s really not another way, not that I can think up on short notice. Any girl who was a victim to something like this, we’d try to help, but Elle-- with her gifts-- anything that’s trying to use _her_ must be considered a greater threat. We have to get whatever this is out of her mind, and I’m the only one who knows how. And besides,” she says with a wry grin, “I’m not quite as fragile as I look-- you of all people would know that."

“If it makes you feel better, Lena,” Rinoa says as she takes the chair between Squall and Seifer, “I think I speak for all three of us when I say this.” She leans her elbows on the table, supporting her chin on her folded hands, and looks her old friend in the eyes. “Anything in there that wants to get to _her,_ is going to have to go through _me_ first.”

\--

“Ellie!” 

Someone’s voice, familiar and distant-- _help me_ , she wants to scream, but she can barely manage to _breathe_ on her own, panic immediate, automatic, eyes still screwed tightly shut. 

There will be hell, when she opens them. There will be hell and teeth and the stink of rot--

_it’s just a bad dream it’s only a bad dream just open your eyes_

The ground is grassy-soft beneath her hands. Ellone squeezes up fistfuls of it to center herself, and allows herself to relax, _wills_ herself to relax, if only by degrees. 

The world around her comes back in fits and starts, the sensory impression of lying in a meadow, the sun warm against her face. She shifts, stretches, small fingers running through the grass, ticklish against her palms. The sky is an effortless, clear blue, the clouds fluffy white and without one hint of rain, when Ellone finally opens her eyes. 

She feels refreshed, rested, content, safe. _Happy,_ now that everything has come back into focus. 

“Ellie! C’mon! We gotta go eat dinner!” A little boy’s voice, breaking through the calm, his favored yellow shirt a bright spot on the horizon. Her brother comes closer, all untidy dark hair and freckles across his nose from too many hours out in the sun, and holds out his hand to her, the other wrapped tight around a wooden sword. 

“Momma says we gotta come inside now, okay?” His face scrunches in something like worry, childish and elaborate across his small features, and he squats down next to her for a moment. “Are you sad? You look sad.” 

She sits up, taking a second to brush the grass and dirt off the skirt of her bright blue dress, _her_ favorite one, with the big white collar. Everything looks bigger now, like she’s gotten smaller during the course of her nap. 

Of course she’s small. She’s a _kid._

“No, I’m not sad. I just had a bad dream, that’s all, I think.” 

“Was it monsters? Because I can fight them off for you! Daddy showed me how!” He sounds so _proud_ of himself that Ellone laughs, and reaches her hand out to him to let him help her up. 

“You can _always_ fight off monsters for me, Squall.” 

He beams, and tucks his hand in hers. 

Ellone scoops up the white stuffed moogle doll that she’d almost forgotten in the dirt, and lets it dangle by one paw in her grip, white fur bright and clean against the green, green grass that they trek through as they head back toward the town. Winhill is peaceful, serene, always smelling of flowers. 

She loves it here. She never wants to leave. 

\--

“ _\--Oh._ I forgot how much that stings.” 

“Sorry, Mrs. Kramer.” Xu’s voice _is_ sorry, a strange note that Rinoa never thought she’d hear as she walks out of the bathroom. 

Xu, slighter, thinner, _smaller_ than Rinoa remembers her ever being (she will forever be an imposing force in Rinoa's mind, cold and merciless and unflappable), is seated in a sleek wheelchair that far outweighs Edea’s in terms of sheer _tech_ , bottom lip bitten in concentration as she affixes something that dully shines metal into the skin beneath the older woman’s ear. 

Rinoa’s seen enough GF nodes in her life to spot one on sight. She comes closer, more out of force of habit than willingness to put herself in Xu’s range (old habits die hard, after all), looking over Xu’s shoulder. 

It’s pretty close to a GF node, but it’s not quite. A stark, sharp line of bright red runs across its front, the splash of color Garden tags all of its dangerous magical artifacts with, standing out starkly above pale, fragile-looking skin and the graying ombre of Edea’s hair, drawn back over her other shoulder. 

“What’s that?” she asks. 

When Xu answers, her tone is more distracted, professional, thumbnail working a tiny button on the outside ridge of the node. “Source-magic transfer point.” 

There’s a straight line in there that Rinoa’s supposed to follow, but she can’t quite. “For what?” 

At that, she earns a patented Xu _look_ , one perfect eyebrow raised that could mean any number of things, ranging from genuine confusion to sheer idiocy on the receiver’s end. This time, when she speaks, it’s _definitely_ clear which end of that spectrum she puts Rinoa on. 

“For transferring source magic from one of you to the other.” Her head inclines toward Edea. “If you want a more detailed explanation, you can ask her. _She_ invented them. Hand me a tissue, will you?”

Rinoa doesn’t press, just grabs and holds out the box from the coffee table, watching as Xu pulls one to wipe up a tiny smear of blood that’s dribbled out from beneath the node. The tissue is balled up, dropped onto the table; the beige sterile gloves she wears are pulled off and tossed after. 

“There. Let me know if it feels loose. It shouldn’t come off with normal motion.” 

Edea moves her head gingerly, testing the placement, and lets her hair fall loose again when it seems she’s satisfied. “It’s fine. Rinoa, dear. Come here, will you?” 

Rinoa crosses to her other side, bending down as she passes to get a better look at the small silvery chip. “When did you come up with _that_?” she asks, fascinated. “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned them before.”

Edea shrugs slightly. “Around the same time we created SeeD and Garden, actually-- one of the first attempts we made to let qualified agents cast magic. Junctioning and paramagic were much cleaner and easier for the user to handle, however. These,” she says, gesturing to the node, “ended up as prototypes for the first GF nodes. I don’t think anyone’s used them since those times, but they appear to still be functional.”   
  
“Hmm… three cheers for the artifact vaults,” Squall muses. “Wonder what else is down there.” 

“Three cheers for hoarding,” Seifer mutters over the rim of his coffee cup, just loud enough to hear, and Squall scowls at him.   
  
“I’d be glad to introduce you to a few of the things I already know we’ve got stored,” he responds with deep sarcasm in his voice. “There’s a really clever little electroshock--”   
  
“Can we _not_ do this now.” Rinoa’s voice is sharp with irritation as she cuts them off, turning away from Edea to glare at the two at the table. “Good grief, you two act like you’re still sixteen.” Rinoa’s rarely successful at getting them to stop on the first try, unfortunately, and that does not appear to be changing any time soon.

“Not my fault he’s still an insufferable little--”

“Shut the fuck up, Seifer, I swear to--”  
  
“Oh, suck my dick, Leonha--”   
  
“Does it even still work?”   
  
“ _ENOUGH!_ ” Rinoa meets Quistis’ eyes for a second as their voices echo in unison around the small room, matched expressions of exasperation on their faces. Rinoa sighs, letting her annoyance filter down through her bond with Squall, and stands up. She takes the three steps over to the table and places her palms flat on the surface, looking back and forth between the two men. 

“I’m just going to say this, and then I trust it won’t be a problem anymore.” Her tone is diplomatic and reasonable, but she keeps a sharp edge underneath the words. “If I have to lug the two of you around in the Stream, I am _not_ going to do it with this constant flow of childish bullshit going back and forth. So suck it up for a couple hours, act like god damned adults, and let’s do what we came here for, or-- well, I’ve got a very energetic little pup in the back of my head again who’d be more than happy to use both your _shin bones_ as _chew toys_.” She smiles, tight and sharp as a stiletto. “Do we _understand_ each other, gentlemen?”

 _(little nibble? little chew, little gnaw?!?_ In her mind, a fuzzy little head lifts up in sudden interest, starlight glinting off its fangs.

Rinoa sighs and pats the pup on the head, digging her nails in and scratching behind its ears. _At this rate, who knows_ , she thinks back.) 

The question hangs in the air around the table, met by nothing but stunned silence.   
  
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” she says with a slight lift of an eyebrow, glancing between the two of them one last time. Quistis is hiding a smile behind carefully pursed lips-- a skill Rinoa expects she’s honed over years of teaching rambunctious teenage mercenaries-- but her eyes are bright with repressed laughter. Rinoa barely resists the urge to wink at her, and turns back toward Edea and Xu.

“Hm.” It’s as good as a cheer from Xu as she’s ever likely to get. Rinoa elects to take it. 

“Okay. So. Show me how this thing works, and let’s go get Ellone back.”


	10. Chapter 10

It’s easier than she expects-- hands joined, eyes closed, a feeling like a sudden warm breeze against the back of her neck, and then…

She’s standing again in the dim, comfortable space inside her mind, the same vast stretch of lunar soil, the world spinning lazily just out of reach. The little puppy greets her with a wag of its tail and a joyous bark that echoes like thunder-- _new friend? new friend!_

 _Old friend_ , more like, but she pets it between the ears anyway, then turns to follow the magic a dozen yards off, where Edea stands, eyes closed, palms up to the sky, soaking in everything she once had, bathing in the starlight. 

Her own magic doesn’t _feel_ any different, save for a few tendrils that stretch between the two of them. There is nothing _lost_. She still feels... limitless.

Rinoa wonders just how much of herself Edea had scooped out with the transfer of power, all those years ago, and just how had she _lived_ this long without it? 

(To lose it now would be akin to robbing the very air from her lungs, stealing away the words from her mouth, plucking the eyes from her skull. _It’s no wonder,_ Rinoa realizes in awe, _that the succession happens most of the time when someone’s almost dead._ She would certainly _want_ to be, if someone took away everything in her soul that mattered.)

“It’s like coming home,” Edea breathes, as Rinoa approaches, and with the close of distance, the thicker wrinkles around her eyes, the white of her hair, the slight hunch to her shoulders, all recede with the imbibing of _power_ . “I’ve missed this, Rinoa-- I’ve missed this _so much_...” 

She reaches, taking Rinoa’s hands in hers. There’s a shared song, the rustling of feathers, that reverberates between them, a melody that feels complete now-- what corners of her power _has_ she been missing all these years, that Edea comes to fill them in like puzzle pieces fallen out of the box? 

The sound of flapping wings makes both of them look up, and Edea gasps; when Rinoa looks back at her, the older woman’s face is split into a broad, joyous grin, and she releases one of Rinoa’s hands to reach up into the sky. Rinoa watches as a miniature galaxy swirls into being over Edea’s outstretched arm, coalescing into the shape of a hawk that lands ever so gently on its mistress’ wrist. 

Well, she’ll stand corrected. _New friends_ , indeed. 

\--

“Well, there’s that taken care of,” Xu says, checking a list on a small clipboard. “One last thing… Commander, Mrs. Kramer, both of you have wills on file with Garden. Are those documents still accurate?” Both of them nod assent, and Xu makes a mark on the paper. “Almasy?”  
  
“What?”   
  
Xu blinks, and now it’s Seifer on the receiving end of the _look_. “In case you don’t come out of there,” she says in a very deliberate tone, “how do you want your possessions distributed?” 

“Bold of you to assume there’s that many of them,” he says flippantly, taking another swig from his coffee cup. “Everything I own goes to my mother.” He pauses, sets the coffee down, and looks Squall directly in the eye. “You assholes better take care of her.” His voice is lacking the usual contempt he reserves for the other man, Rinoa notices, and Squall holds eye contact for a moment before nodding.

“On my honor,” he says simply, and Seifer gives a single sharp nod in acknowledgment as Edea gently covers his hand with her own. Xu makes another shorthand note, then turns to Rinoa. 

“Heartilly?”

“Sell the shop,” she says, swallowing around the lump that’s formed in her throat. “Half the proceeds to the Timber Animal Rescue Foundation, the other half and the contents of my accounts to Sarah Dincht.” The name makes Xu look up at her sharply, dark eyes widening slightly, but it only lasts for a moment before she regains control and nods before looking back down to her paper. Rinoa thinks she sees the tiniest touch of a smile, but it, too, doesn’t last. 

“I think that’s all, then,” Xu says, and Squall pushes back his chair.  
  
“Keep the place running for me, Xu,” he tells her as he stands.   
  
“Think I might refresh the paint in your office, while you’re out anyway,” she replies lightly. “How’s chartreuse sound?” He huffs a laugh and shakes his head; Rinoa gets the feeling it’s some kind of joke between them, but she doesn’t have time to think much about it before Quistis stands up, too.   
  
“Be so, _so_ careful,” she says to Squall, and Rinoa casually turns away, looking down at Ellone’s sleeping face. She wonders if she’s imagining it, but she looks marginally more peaceful than she had last night, as if a nightmare had faded into a more pleasant dream.

She’s not avoiding anything, no. There are just… more interesting things to be looking at, and thinking about. 

Seifer’s hand between her shoulder blades is a welcome distraction, and she leans back slightly into the touch. His shoulder is warm against hers, the scent of soap and smoke and coffee a familiar and comforting thing. There’s nothing, _nothing_ , about the prospect of what they’re about to do that she’s enjoying, but if she’s being honest... she’s grateful that he’s doing it with her. 

“Hey,” he whispers in her ear, and she tries not to shiver. “Wanna out-PDA the boring old marrieds?” 

She snorts, planting her hand over his face and playfully pushing him away-- not too far away, though. Leave it to Seifer to ruin moments, she thinks as she turns slightly to look at him. His grin is lopsided and unrepentant, and she shakes her head and smiles back at him. “No sappy goodbyes here,” she says quietly, laying a hand on his arm as she turns to face him. “You’re coming with me.”  
  
“I’m coming with you,” he repeats, and something in his eyes goes a little bit soft. She _does_ give into the impulse to kiss him, then, briefly enough to center herself, to calm her heart from its racing pace. He squeezes her butt.

Rinoa laughs. It’ll have to do. 

“Ready?” Squall asks the three of them. There are nods, not all in unison, not all the same level of certainty.

Kadowaki directs them into various seats-- the dorm is lacking in many of them, and Rinoa finds herself alone in the bedroom, fighting the urge to fidget as the doctor sticks half a dozen monitoring nodes in various places, averting her eyes as the IV line is slipped into the crook of her elbow, taped down securely in case something goes haywire. 

Seifer has moved his chair so he’s just outside the door, and his gaze is steady as he meets hers, calmer about this than anyone should rightfully be. 

But Seifer’s always been ready for anything, always willing to throw himself into danger, and he’s undoubtedly been waiting for a chance to get back into the _real_ action for _years_. 

She licks her lips, mouth suddenly dry, and looks up at Kadowaki with her finger on the button that will release the sedative into her blood, the guarantee that none of them will rip themselves out of the Stream unexpectedly. “Okay. Go for it.” 

There are a long few moments of wondering if this is even going to work at all. 

Then there is the sensation of being pulled underwater, a current too powerful to resist, and then she is drowning. 

\--

Dinner is _splendid_ , chicken and macaroni and cheese with the baked crunchies that Ellone loves (and that Squall would eat the whole pan of, if anyone left him unsupervised long enough to get away with it), green beans, a whole big glass of milk that she needs two hands to steady when she drinks from it. 

“You’re quiet, Ellie-bean,” her father says, seated across the sturdy wooden table, cutting into his meat and chewing thoughtfully. “You tucker yourselves out playing all day?” 

_wake up it’s only a dream it’s just a bad dream_

She nods. “I fell asleep for a little bit in the meadow.” 

“No better place to nap than under the sun,” Laguna agrees with a grin, reaching to his right to squeeze Raine’s hand, the affection and _love_ between them unmistakable, the thing that made home _home_. 

“Nope!” she agrees, trading milk for fork, digging into her food with gusto. 

She _is_ drowsy, as the evening ambles on, head drooping as their parents watch a bit of television, Squall sprawled on the rug in the way of everyone’s feet, coloring in a moomba with a child’s careful concentration. He’s surprisingly good at mostly staying inside the lines, Elle thinks, then surprises herself with how big a yawn that follows the thought. 

Laguna carries her upstairs to bed; Raine reads her a story that she only hears the first few pages of. Her bed is warm, her moogle soft and comforting in her arms. 

“Good night,” Raine whispers, bending to kiss her temple. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”


	11. Chapter 11

She _is_ drowning, Rinoa realizes abruptly, when she hits a strangely soft surface that bounces her back up, down, around, down against something solid, losing which way is _up_ , and all the seeping cold of the river sets into her bones at once. 

Panicked, she flips, flails, turns, aims for the brightest direction (it is not by very much at all) of all her choices-- thankfully, it _is_ correct, and Rinoa’s a strong swimmer. She comes up splashing, spluttering, choking on the water-- someone’s hand grabs fast to her collar, someone yells above her-- Rinoa gets another mouthful when they fail to yank her free in one fell swoop, accidentally swallowing half of it. Her knee slams against a slimy rock as the rescuer’s arm goes around her waist, trying to keep her head above the frantic current. The pain shocks her into full awareness. 

Seifer drags her gasping onto muddy grass, arms coming around her to keep her from going straight back in, an easy slide down the bank. She sputters again, coughs, and with one wide-eyed realization, shoves away from him about a foot to the left to vomit up the contents of her stomach and what feels like half the wild river besides. 

“ _Shit_ , Rin--” He thumps the heel his hand against her back until there is nothing left to come up, soaked hair hanging in her eyes and blood racing down her knee. “Easy, yeah? Breathe, just--” 

She wants to tell him to go to hell, but it seems they’ve already arrived. So she stays there on hands and knees, heart slamming in her chest, until she feels okay enough to move back more towards upright. 

“I’m okay. You?” He looks about as bedraggled as she feels, soaked, mud smeared down one sculpted cheek, bright hair plastered across his forehead, in his eyes. 

“Yeah. Yeah.” He shakes his head, sending water flying, and rakes his hands back through his hair. It doesn’t really help, considering the state of his hands. There’s more brown than blond there now.. “Some landing, huh?” 

At that, Rinoa can only nod. “The others?”   
  
“We’re fine,” Squall offers. She feels the thrum of concern between them-- it’s easier to telegraph back that she’s alright than try to say it out loud. _He_ seems to have avoided falling straight into the water ( _or whatever’s passing for water in this nightmare_ , she thinks), but there’s a decent amount of mud on his otherwise bleached-white t-shirt, and more of it streaked down his right arm and leg. 

Edea is at his side, carriage erect, the enormous celestial hawk perched on her wrist and looking as unruffled as she is. Rinoa wonders vaguely if the bird had caught her as she fell, or at least slowed their descent; she’s the only one of the four of them that doesn’t look like she’s been dragged through a mud pit.

Rinoa’s magical dog comes bounding to her side, as the cold slowly ebbs away from where it’s gone bone-deep, shutting out _everything_ for a little while with the shock of it; she digs her fingers into its shining, dense coat for some manner of comfort. Something _grounding_ , at least. It licks her face, and her skin feels like shooting stars. 

Next to her, Seifer shudders abruptly, and swears, fumbling over his shirt, reaching into his collar to grab hold of something fast-moving beneath the thin, soaked cotton. “What the _hell_ \-- come _here_ , you little shit--” 

He looks just as surprised as any of them to finally pull out a small red creature, bright like a miniature burning flame-- it’s too big to be a lizard, Rinoa realizes, too indistinct to make out, flickering in all the shades of red, eyes white-hot. It makes a delighted noise at Seifer’s sudden recognition and laughter, letting it race between his wet hands, up his arm, coming to settle on his shoulder like he’s carrying a campfire there. 

It looks like a little dragon, she realizes, now that it’s close enough. Or, no, no longer that shape as it shifts again, maybe some kind of tiny cat? But whatever it is, it shifts again, and the dragon/lizard/cat rubs its face against Seifer’s chin. She lets it be whatever it wants; it’s simply putting off _warmth_ , like he does when his arm’s thrown across her waist in bed sometimes, soothing heat. 

“Nice squeaky toy, Almasy,” Squall comments; there’s a sour note there. “How come I’m the only one who doesn’t have some sort of weird animal companion?” 

“Because you suck,” Seifer replies automatically, distracted with scratching the living flame beneath what Rinoa assumes is its chin. There is a whole _string_ of indecipherable chittering coming from it, followed by something that sounds close to _purring_. 

“...Whatever.” 

“It’s a way to control innate magic,” Edea explains, her voice infinitely patient as she strokes the hawk’s forbidding head. “A technique I learned as a child, and taught to Seifer. And to Rinoa as well, of course. You rely on paramagic and junctioning. There’s none of that here--” 

“So, no manifestation. Got it.” Squall stalks over to Rinoa, hand outstretched to pull her to her feet. Seifer, he ignores entirely, brows furrowed, the scars that cover most of the left side of his face scrunched up with the motion. 

She doesn’t miss the little thrum of jealousy that shoots between them, nor does she miss seeing his gunblade in his hand, emanating its faint blue glow; at least he’s come armed, and there’s a bit of comfort in that fact Rinoa wasn’t expecting. 

Not that she knows what they’re expecting here at all, only that when Seifer gets to his feet, _he_ bends to scoop up a familiar dark blade from the grass, a pleased look in his eyes as he checks the chamber-- Rinoa surreptitiously glances down at her arm, trying to see if Angel Wing had magically appeared, but her wrist is bare. 

“Thought you melted this down for scrap, Leonhart.” Hyperion still fits seamlessly in Seifer's hand, a natural extension of his arm as he brandishes the blade.   
  
“Won’t say it wasn’t tempting,” Squall answers simply. “Wanna go a round for old time’s sake?” he says after a moment-- and for the first time since all of this this began, Seifer smiles at him. 

“Think you still got it?”  
  
“Think _you_ do?” 

Rinoa glances at Edea, and both women sigh. “Shall we save the sparring matches for _later_ , boys?” Edea says pointedly. “We’re here for a reason, remember?”   
  
“Yes, ma’am,” Squall says at the same time as Seifer mutters “Okay, mom,” but Rinoa doesn’t miss the look that passes between them, and she’s fairly sure Edea didn’t either. 

_shinbones?_

_Next time._

“So.” Seifer looks around them at the flat, empty plain. “How exactly do we find her, anyway? It’s not like there’s signposts or anything.”   
  
“Not quite,” Edea tells him, “but that doesn’t mean we’re lost completely.” She turns to Rinoa. “Do you remember what I showed you, dear?” Rinoa nods; Edea’s memories of how to do this had been clear, but doing it herself is a daunting prospect. 

After all, it’s not often that one has a chance to listen to the voices of the dead. 

She kneels down, sifting her fingers through the damp grass as she does so, then places her palm flat on the ground. She breathes in, closes her eyes, and _listens-_ \- down below the sound of her own breath, her companions’ emotions, below the eons-long pulse of the land itself-- listens for the voices of the ones who come before, and after. 

_-sister-_ _  
_

_-sister-elder-mother-sister-sister--_ The whispers tumble over each other, a susurrus of girlish voices swirling around her like a shimmering mist. 

She knows old sorceresses, like her, like Edea, are incredibly rare. Most girls lose their way quickly, lose their hearts, their very selves to the magic. Many of them returned to the Stream at the same age as she had gained her magic. A sorceress who survives to grow old has fought not only the world, but the monsters in her own mind, and _won_. 

They call her _sister_ , they call her _elder_ , they call her _diamond_. 

_I’m looking for our sister_ , she tells them-- the conventions of this place, she knows, mean any woman who shares the magic is part of the sisterhood. _She walks a path among these hills that she did not choose._

_-the time weaver-dream walker-blighted one-lost child-_

_Her name is Ellone_ , Rinoa thinks to herself as she listens. 

_-stolen-captive-trapped in dreams-save her!-_ There is a sudden frantic undercurrent to the voices, like a panic just beginning on the other side of a large crowd, and Rinoa feels her pulse quicken in response. 

_Where is she? What’s holding her?_

_-field of lies-mistress of illusions-first star-false dreamer-devourer-_ **_EDEN!_ **   
  
The last word comes through as a scream, desperate, _terrified_ , ringing in her ears as the force of it shoves her up and out of the flow.

Rinoa’s breathing hard as she lands on her side, a shocked cry coming out half-choked and hoarse. Seifer is at her side half a second before Squall, both of them steadying her, and she looks up into Edea’s wide, clear green eyes. She draws in a deep breath to speak, and--

 _sister?_ Rinoa looks sharply down to the furry nudge against her calf, the galaxy eyes that look once to the ground and then back to her. 

The star-flecked paw is resting on the spot her palm had been, where a hair-thin filament, the color and warmth of a summer sky, sprouts from the earth, stretching taut off into the distance. 


	12. Chapter 12

“Traditionally, Eden is the name given to the very first sorceress,” Edea tells them as they walk, Rinoa holding the sky-blue thread loosely to keep it above the mud puddles. “She was supposed to be a very scholarly woman-- she wanted to discover the limits of this new gift, and what it could and could not do. It’s rare to hear her spoken of in fear.”

“They called her ‘first star’, so that does make sense,” Rinoa says. “But why? Why would she be the one holding Ellone captive?”

“Feels a little bit like deja-vu, honestly. Wasn’t Elle the one that got targeted last time you two had to go kick some sorceress ass?” Seifer, Rinoa notices, still goes out of his way to never mention _her_ name. She doesn’t blame him. 

“Yes, but that was different - Ultimecia was trying to--” Squall breaks off suddenly, stopping in his tracks, and Rinoa feels his shock through their bond along with the memory.

 _They are seventeen, and invincible. Ultimecia’s castle feels_ wrong _, like a circus funhouse where the calliope is off-key and the mirrors are all cracked, but they are seventeen, and invincible, and the Queen of Dragons lies dead in front of them._

 _“The hell is_ that _thing?” Moonlight glances silver off the pigments in Zell’s tattoo, shifting as he looks sideways at the stone in Quistis’ hand - the physical form of whatever it was she had drawn out of the beast during the fight._

 _“A GF, I think,” she says, “but it doesn’t feel quite the same as the others.”_ _  
__  
__“Nothing here_ does _,” Irvine points out. “Place gives me the creeps.” Selphie pats his arm comfortingly, then reaches out to take the stone._

 _“Weird and creepy, huh? Give it here, then,” she says._ _  
__  
__“You sure about that, Seff?”_

_“Yeah, I’ll just put it between the literal demon and the train made of dead souls,” she quips with a whimsical shrug. Quistis laughs, short and sharp, before handing the stone over._

_“Hard to argue with that, I guess. What’s its name, anyway?”_ _  
__  
__Selphie tilts her head, studying the stone and the strange, twisted thing buried inside for a long moment._

_“Eden,” she says finally._

“Eden,” Rinoa whispers, “shit, I’d almost forgotten - and didn’t she say that it liked to try to talk to her?”  
  
“And that’s why she eventually took it out,” Squall says, “it was getting to be too much to deal with. Pretty sure the damn thing’s still in the vaults, now that I think about it.”

“You guys might want to work on better security for that shit,” Seifer interrupts. “Because if Eden’s _here_ , it’s sure as hell not stuck in a box in the basement somewhere.” 

“Shu--” Squall cuts off, exhaling sharply through his nose after a moment. “Yeah, I’ll have to look at that when we get back. Give Penny and the rest of R&D something new and fucked up to pick apart.” 

“Are she and Xu still together?” Rinoa asks; Penny had been a friend of hers, long ago, the two of them bonding over tea and books in the sunny Garden library. 

“Happily married, and happy to gang up on me when either of them think I’m wrong.” Squall scowls, and Rinoa carefully hides a smile. 

“Speaking of Chang, when’d she get that wheelchair? Damn thing looks like it’s half race car.”

Squall shrugs. “A few years ago, after a job. Details are need-to-know only, so don’t bother asking.”  
  
His response is predictable: “Yeah, well, I wanna know.”  
  
“ _Need_ to know, Almasy. As in, you don’t.” 

_\--blood and screaming and it’s Xu’s voice like no one in Garden has ever heard it before, tearing through the lobby like a knife. Aki’s got her in his arms and both their weapons slung across his back, bellowing over her incoherent pleas for a medic,_ any _medic. They’re followed by a trail of red on the linoleum that Squall has to chase, shoving his way through the crowds. Penny sticks her head out of her office door, curiosity quickly morphing into shock, then sheer horror as she recognizes her wife’s voice, and he doesn’t think, just grabs her wrist and drags her with him--_

Rinoa shakes her head, trying to shake off the vivid sensory scrap that comes out of Squall’s head so abruptly it’s like a gunshot. She puts a hand on his arm, trying to regain her equilibrium before they have yet _another_ fight over things that don’t matter. 

“Leave it alone, Seifer. I’m serious.” 

He raises one questioning eyebrow, looking between the two of them before shrugging. “Alright, have it your way. Just saying, that’s some damn slick tech she’s got there.”

“About two thirds of the upgrades are custom-- you can ask her for details when we get back if you want. She might even tell you,” Squall says wryly, “Hyne knows she’s spent enough time bragging to me, Quis, and everyone else in earshot about that thing. Anyway-- Matron, you were saying?”

This time, at least, the unstable calm between them seems to have been restored, and Rinoa sighs, rubbing her eyes.  
  
 _Blood and screaming, the scent of snow in the Trabian moonlight, the acid and ozone of experimental magic gone horribly, explosively wrong-- blood under her fingernails, up to her elbows, soaking into her socks, magic pouring out of her like water as she fights against death itself--_

She shakes her head again, responding to Squall’s silent concern with _I’m alright, just a memory_. She gets the feeling he doesn’t believe her.

\--

There’s no real way of knowing what time it is, or how long they’ve been there-- the wan, sourceless light in the sky doesn’t change, and she doesn’t feel hungry-- but after hours of walking have left them all short-tempered and snippy, Edea wisely suggests a rest break. Nobody objects.

Rinoa’s reminded of the dozens of times they did this on the road, back then-- the web of Protect spells shaped into a dome over a campfire, field rations and cold water, jokes about looking for the softest rock. The crumbs of familiarity are a comfort in this strange place. 

She’s not sure if it’s the light, the magic, or the stone that seems to be digging into her hip no matter what position she chooses, but sleep does not seem to be an option. She grumbles quietly to herself as she turns over yet again, facing the dwindling campfire as she settles back down. 

_You’re thinking really loudly, you know._ The firelight casts orange off of Squall’s bad eye, but the other one is open and fixed on her.

 _Sorry_ , she replies. _I’m still not used to having you back in my head, I guess._

 _Neither am I._ He pauses for a second, and she can feel the uncertainty bubbling up under the background flow of constant worry that she’s been getting from him for the past two days. _There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, if neither of us can sleep anyway,_ he says. _We should go a little bit out, though-- I don’t want to wake Matron up._

 _Sounds good to me._ Both of them know Seifer sleeps like a log, absolutely lost to the world for seven hours at a time, and neither he nor Edea stir as Squall and Rinoa move outside the protective honeycomb barrier of spells. 

“What’s on your mind?” Rinoa asks as she sits against a large rock; Squall sinks down next to her, leaning forward slightly to brace one arm against his knees. He’s still for a long moment before he sits back, letting his head knock against the stone with a dull thud. 

“Look… I know I’ve always been shit at making you feel better about things,” he says quietly, “but I have to _try…_ you were thinking about Trabia again earlier.” 

Rinoa breathes in a little sharper than she intends to; the memories of that night, of the days that followed, are still sharp-edged, and she’s been cutting herself open every time she brushes up against one. “Coming back brought up a lot of memories,” she says, “and not all of them are happy ones.” He stays silent next to her as she wraps her arms around herself, staring off into the distance. “Two of my best friends died on that mission, Squall,” she says slowly, barely above a whisper. “And then-- your eye, Irvine’s arm-- If I’d been _better_ , then maybe…” 

It’s been years since she accepted that she couldn’t have saved Zell; he was too close to the source of the blast, and even if she’d been there in seconds, she doesn’t think she could have changed anything. But… 

_Row on row of white-sheeted beds, row on row of horribly-injured SeeDs, row on row of blaring and beeping machines pulling her from one crisis to the next._

_Two days in and it still smells like blood and burning, only now there is less snow and mountain air, and more iodine and antiseptic cleaner overlaid in a confusing, headache-inducing mix. Or maybe that’s the fifty straight hours on her feet causing that. She’s not sure anymore._

_Unknown, experimental magic. Poor storage, slap-dash security. A combat spell gone wide, acting like a spark hitting a barrel of gunpowder._

_It’s something that she can’t touch-- can’t siphon off to allow Doc to fix what’s wrong, can’t pull the surging flares of magical energy out of the victims to let them heal. It’s like trying to force a key into the wrong lock, twisting and turning, desperately trying to force something that will not budge at her touch._

_She can’t move it, can’t_ fix _it, and it’s killing her friends as she watches._

_Kadowaki hands her a cup of something dark and bitter; Rinoa pulls a face at the taste, but she drinks it in one gulp because caffeine and stubbornness are all that’s keeping her on her feet. She’s exhausted, more than she’s ever been in her life before._

_She can’t stop._

_She throws the paper cup in the trash can, scrubs her fists against her red, tired eyes, and follows the doctor back into the bays._

“Rin.” She blinks as Squall’s voice pulls her out of the memory, back into the half-light and infinite plains, from a past crisis to the present one. “You…” She looks up at him, arms still tight around herself, and he sighs and reaches out to push a stray piece of hair back behind her ear. “They never, ever would have blamed you. You know that.”  
  
“Just because _they_ wouldn’t blame me doesn’t mean that _I_ don’t blame me.” The words are bitter in her mouth, marinated in the thirty-year old guilt swirling dark and heavy in her stomach. “I should have been able to _do_ something, damn it.” 

“You did,” he tells her. “You got me and Irvine out of there alive, you got Xu back on her feet, you were one of the biggest reasons that day wasn’t an even _bigger_ disaster, Rin.” His hand is still warm against her neck, and she can’t stop herself from leaning into the touch; after the last two days, comfort of any sort feels like water on a parched houseplant, and she’ll soak up whatever she can. “Didn’t I ever tell you that?” 

“I don’t know,” she says “I wasn’t really… all the way there after that.” She hasn’t really been all the way there ever since, if she’s being honest-- she’d lost people before, but it was the first time she’d felt _responsible_ for it (and not the last). 

“Neither was I.” He sighs and moves to put an arm around her shoulders, something of instinct and memory, and she shifts to lean her head against him. There are some things they’ve never been good at putting into words, and probably never will be. But this is enough for now, she thinks, and closes her eyes.

\--

She dreams, safe into her little bed with the moogle tucked beneath her chin, of a distant-far place, barren and strange.

Her whimper is faint, inaudible and easily mistaken for the creak of glass in the window frame, or a loose spring in the mattress as Ellone shifts slightly. 

In the emptiness, she shifts as well, and suddenly isn’t alone anymore, a reflection like she’s been inverted staring back at her. One hand raises up in greeting; the shadow with the white-blonde hair raises her hand at the same time, fingers crooked exactly like hers. 

“Hello. What’s your name?” Ellone asks, feeling the smile curl up on her lips at the mimic. 

“Hello. What’s your name?” the shadow repeats, the slash where its mouth is a sudden bright pink against the darkness. 

“Ellone.” It comes out slowly, like she’s not entirely sure. 

“Ellone,” comes the inevitable mimic, but the word is overlaid by a different one entirely-- _Cia,_ she hears, innocent and sweet, tinged with an accent that sounds like the flower seller’s down the road, the woman who immigrated from Trabia. 

“Hi, Cia.”  
  
“Hi, Cia.” 

The shadow turns and runs, in that inevitable invitation of all children everywhere-- _come play with me_. 

Ellone runs after her, laughter filling the blank expanse. 


	13. Chapter 13

It’s like chasing after a ghost. Cia runs, runs, runs, little feet in patent-leather shiny shoes never quite hitting the ground; Ellone’s footsteps sound discordant and unreal in her wake. 

_come play with me!_

She would, if she could _catch up_ \-- “Wait!” 

\--

Seifer’s watching her when she finally wakes up, sitting on the other side of the dead campfire, his expression unreadable. 

“You okay?” she asks around a yawn. 

“Peachy,” comes the answer, flippant and a little on edge. Not that Rinoa blames him in the _least_ ; the idea of chasing down some more magical malarkey is undoubtedly getting further out of his comfort zone the further they’re forced to walk. Seifer is a man meant for action, not the waiting in between. He’s got Hyperion across his lap, long fingers drumming against the flat of the blade. “Another day in paradise.” 

She sits up, stretching, twisting her torso from side to side to release the stiffness in her back from sleeping on _rocks_ for a few hours. A few extra yoga stretches do her some good, make her feel like, just for a second, she’s in her twenties (okay, maybe thirties, if she’s forced to be honest)-- when she comes up from bending forward, nose near the ground, he’s still watching her. 

“Thought we talked about being honest,” she chides idly (and wonders what magic it’ll take to get her a cup of _tea_ in this place.) Her hair keeps falling in her face; Rinoa brushes it back absently, tucking the errant lock behind her ear. 

He huffs slightly, stilling his hands. She’d forgotten how _big_ Hyperion was, honestly, and how easily he’d handled it, like he was born with it in his hands-- none of them had missed his practice swings, lagging behind the group long enough to get a couple of fluid motions back into his bones, graceful arcs and strikes. 

He is beautiful in his violence. 

She hopes it’ll be enough. 

The little fire lizard skitters out from behind his back, distracting them both from the silence that stretches on, popping up onto Seifer’s shoulder to stare at her as well. It’s harder to pin down its gaze, sparks of blue that move incessantly. 

Rinoa glances away, and sighs. “ _Seifer_.” 

“Yeah. Sorry. Just-- when’d you do the streaky things again?” 

“The what?” 

He gestures toward her hair, and Rinoa pulls some of it forward, twisting her head to look. There are indeed bleached-out blonde streaks amidst all the rich, deep locks. 

_“Do you like it?” she asks him, sprawled atop Seifer, letting her freshly cut-and-dyed hair dangle in his face, tickling his cheeks. He scrunches his nose in reflex, and tucks it back behind her ear._

_“Suits you, princess. Rebellious, I’d call it.”_

_He draws her back down onto the pink, pink bedsheets, and Rinoa laughs, delighting in his kiss._

\--

\--gone around a big gray pile of rocks; Elle chases her, breathing hard, tired, so tired, why are they running so far, so fast-- 

“Cia!” she calls, but there’s no answer, “ _Cia!”_

_come and find me!_

The rocks come closer-- Ellone’s steps slow, as the mouth of a cave opens up cavernous, stalactites like teeth hanging down from the ceiling. 

_don’t be afraid!_

Cia laughs, from somewhere far, far away-- it sounds like a nightmare, it sounds like the scream of church bells for the devil himself. 

_come on, Ellone!_

\--

“What the--” Rinoa blinks, staring at the short, dark blonde streaks in her hair. “How…?” Seifer shrugs, and she looks closer at him. She wonders if she’s imagining it, but she swears… “Give me your hand,” she says, reaching out, and he raises a confused eyebrow but complies. 

She knows there’s a burn scar on his left wrist, remembers him helping her make donuts one lazy Sunday morning and splashing the oil on himself. She knows it’s shaped like a crescent moon, sharp white against the sun-brown of his skin--

It’s not there anymore. 

“-- _What the fuck?!”_

Both of their heads snap in the direction of Squall’s abrupt shout, who is sitting straight upright, hands grabbing at the left side of his face. 

The _intact_ left side of his face, Rinoa realizes in shock as they get closer-- the scars gone, the damage vanished, his left eye as grey-blue as the one on the right, no longer clouded over with a milky haze. He’s panicking, the bond between them shrieking like a high note on an electric guitar, over and over again. 

“What the fuck, what the _fuck_ \--” 

Rinoa almost makes it to him first, but Edea beats her by seconds, on her knees in front of him to grab his hands before he can accidentally reverse whatever magic is at work (it’s magic, it _has_ to be magic, they don’t just... rewind the clock without any sort of influence.)

“Squall, listen to me. Look at me. Breathe. Calm down.” 

“--Mom.” Seifer’s voice, stunned. “Mom, your--” 

Her hair is jet-black again, her face in profile unlined, smooth, as if she’s gone in with an eraser and removed every last trace of _time_. But she is not focused on Seifer, she’s still with Squall, still calming him down. 

Eventually, his breathing eases. Eventually, he blinks hard, both eyes screwing shut, reopening slowly, several times in a row as if to make sure he isn’t going crazy, and that this is _really_ happening. 

“--the _fuck_ is going on?” Seifer demands abruptly, and his voice echoes overloud in the emptiness around them. 

\--

\-- she has no memory of those first steps into the dark, only that it swallows her whole. 

“cia?” 

her whisper is afraid, echoing back mockingly. 

_cia cia cia_ \--

_cia’s here! kome find me!_

“i can’t _see_ you--” 

\--

“It’s always been just a theory,” Edea says, and even her voice is different now-- stronger, more resonant, even as they walk up and down a gradually steeper series of hills. She shows no sign of slowing, of even being the slightest bit winded. “The magic can burn a human body out, but it can also sustain, even heal - the idea was that if one spent long enough in the Stream, it may begin to not only heal injuries, but reverse the ravages of time itself.”  
  
“Well, I think we can consider that theory proven.” Rinoa does feel stronger now, as if her body is remembering muscles and sinew of its own volition-- she feels a bit like the little warrior princess she once thought she was, agile and strong. She just wishes she had Angel Wing on her wrist again. 

“How far back is it gonna take us?” Seifer asks as they crest another hill. “I don’t really like the idea of being a little kid again-- not here, at least.” 

“I’m honestly not sure,” Edea answers. “It could be any of a number of things - when you felt strongest, when the magic first touched you, and yes, possibly back to childhood. There’s really no way to tell.” She pauses at the top of the rise, looking around for a moment as a breeze catches her smooth black hair. “I think we may be getting closer to her - it feels different now.”

There’s a rustling sound in the grass, like a snake moving too fast for comfort, circling around its prey-- underneath it there’s a sound of wind, a gale whistling over a bottomless canyon, and Rinoa feels a rumble beneath her feet. The wind changes, a dry, dusty laughter now, a sound completely devoid of anything like human feeling or soul.

“Do you hea--”   
  
\--

she finds cia standing still in a puddle of light, her white-blonde hair glowing like a halo around her head. 

“i’msorryi’msorryi’msorry-- i know i’m bad but she’s even _worse--_ ” she’s whimpering, frozen stock-still as she stares up into the darkness, and ellone runs to her. 

“cia?” She grabs the smaller girl by the shoulder, shaking her gently. “cia, you gotta-- c’mon, you gotta move--”  
  
“run,” she whispers, her terrified voice somehow sounding like a little girl and a woman grown at the same time, two echoes overlaid and twisting around each other. “ellone-- little lost one-- you need to run, it’s _here_ , you kan’t let it katch you--!” 

she turns toward ellone, dark eyes wide, features contorting in fear. “you have to run, _it’s already h--”_

 _right here,_ a different voice says, dry and papery, soaked in a kind of timeless, dispassionate malice that makes ellone’s blood cold. 

she takes a step back as cia reaches for her - only it’s not the white-haired little girl anymore, it’s something made of ink and dying stars, shedding her form like a molting spider. Shreds of pale skin fall away from something that shifts before her eyes, a squirming shard of a fathomless void slashed with a gaping, fanged grin-- something part of her subconscious recognizes, is _terrified_ of, and ellone tries to take another step backward.

she trips on a stone, falls backward, scrabbles for a handhold in the suddenly shifting dirt beneath her--

 _i’m right here, i’m right here litTLE DREAMER_ , and the claws reach out of the darkness, stained with black and red, reaching for her heart. 

ellone screams. 

\--

It happens too quickly for Rinoa to do anything but scream.

It’s like watching something carved from boiling tar rise from the ground, all impossible angles and seething darkness, a gaping mouth carved of dead white set grinning against the void. 

Seifer and Squall both push past her, but it’s Seifer who makes it there first, bulldozing both Squall and Rinoa out of the way, sending her slamming into the ground as the long dark line of Hyperion’s keen edge streaks through the air. 

It is not enough. 

It is not enough. 

The toothy void _consumes_ him, mouth opening wider than Rinoa can even comprehend, and she is still aware that she is _screaming_ as all those bright white sharp teeth carve into his chest. His blood sprays like a geyser, hot when it arcs back, smacking across Rinoa’s face as the thing shakes him like a _dog_ , hurling his mangled body to the side. 

“ _Seifer!”_ Edea shouts, even as Squall lunges into the battle; Rinoa can’t move, can’t move, stock still on the ground. “Seifer, no, _no--”_

The world goes bitterly cold, ice in Edea’s palm before Squall can even make so much as one strike. She _hurls_ it, sending it straight into the center of the void--

The sound it makes is unearthly. 

It vanishes, gone as quickly as it’s arrived, and Squall’s two-handed slash through the air meets nothing at all. He whirls, frantic-- _where is it, where the hell did it go--_

\--

“Elle, Elle, _Ellie_ , wake up, it’s just a dream--” 

She buries her face in her father’s chest, sobbing incoherently. 

“There was something in the _dark!”_

_\--_

Seifer’s blood is soaking the earth, soaking into Edea’s skirt as she cradles her son's head in her lap. 

Rinoa is frozen.


	14. Chapter 14

“ _Almasy--_ shit, why’d you do that, you _idiot?! Rinoa!”_

It’s Squall who snaps her out of it, the sharp command in his voice enough to break through the static in her brain. She scrambles up, heedless of the blood smearing on her palms, cut open on little rocks as she’d hit the ground--

“ _Move_ ,” she orders Squall, scrambling to kneel at Seifer’s side. “Other side. We need to stop the bleeding-- use your shirt.” He obeys quickly, ripping it off over his head-- the white fabric stains crimson almost instantaneously as he shoves it against the gaping tear in Seifer’s chest. Rinoa moves his hands, instinct putting pressure in the most effective spots; as she grabs his wrist, she feels him push a spell through the fabric and into the wound, adrenaline and shock amplifying the force of it as Edea shifts slightly to give them better access.   
  
“ _Dammit--_ Seifer, you reckless dumbass, you do _not_ get to die on me here--” Squall’s voice is tight, and Rinoa can feel the dull thrum of anxiety pulsing between them. Her heart is racing, tripping just on the edge of panic, but her hands are steady-- moving on memory. Staunch the bleeding, dull the pain, mend the wounds, just like a thousand times before. 

She doesn’t remember it being this _hard_ before. 

Curagas feel like they slip through her fingers, glancing off the edges of the wounds instead of burrowing in-- Regen evaporates into the air as soon as she casts it-- even her own deeper magic feels like it’s blunted, absorbed by the atmosphere before it can do its work. She’s barely keeping ahead of the bleeding--

Seifer’s hand closes over her own, blood-slick and shaking, and she looks up. His eyes are the color of the ocean, vivid in his too-pale face, and a trickle of red runs down from the corner of his mouth. “I’ll tell her you said hello,” he says, voice rougher than she can ever remember hearing it before, and her eyes fill with sudden tears. 

“Don’t even _fucking_ think about it,” she says, shaking her head to clear her eyes. The words stick in her throat, coming out choked and sharp as the stones digging into her knees. “I am _not_ losing you, too.” His answering smile is sad and wistful, and Rinoa feels a trickle of icy despair down her spine.

She can’t fix it, not here. Not in this place where her magic evaporates as soon as it leaves her fingers.   
  
“Edea,” she says suddenly, looking up into the older woman’s tear-filled eyes. “You have to take him back-- I can’t fix this, but Kadowaki can.” Edea nods slightly.   
  
“Lena can,” she repeats, as if by her word she can will it to be true. “But--”   
  
“We’ll be here when you come back,” Squall tells her urgently, “but you have to go _now_.” She nods again, stronger this time, and closes her eyes. 

Rinoa leans over Seifer, kissing his forehead quickly. “Love you,” she whispers.

They disappear as she straightens.

Rinoa is left kneeling on the ground with Squall sitting, shocked into silence, at her side. Both of them are drenched in blood, staring at the dove-grey thread of light leading back the way they came. 

She wraps her arms around herself and begins to weep.

\--

There isn't a choice. Not when it comes to him. 

Seifer bleeds even as she pulls him through space, through time, he bleeds and pales and gurgles his breath, gasping. Edea strokes his forehead gently, touch soothing even as her heart is breaking.

There's unspoken understanding in his eyes, so close to death he may as well be the tiny newborn she'd held in her arms decades ago, fair hair, bright curious gaze, _her_ son even before she'd signed the paperwork to declare him that officially. Cid had sent her to the field hospital on Centra's shore, Esthar and its war so close beyond that that one could almost see the blue of its lights, to collect an orphaned baby.

She'd come back as a mother.

His fingers dig into her wrist, his lips red with his own blood, a scarlet slash against his white face. There isn’t much time left, and this is not a clock she can unwind. “Mom...”

There's never been a choice. 

Edea ignites the bond.

The knighting erupts between them, black feathers, birds in flight. She sees Ultimecia in his memories, dominant and _red_ , feels his fear, his terror, mixed with that slavish loyalty-- _just let me die just let me die, he begs as she snaps all of his fingers on the left hand, i’m so sorry i won’t disobey you again i’m sorry i’m sorry, babbled even as she moves to the right to even it out_ \-- and urges him past it with soft, soothing words, _I won't let anything happen to you._

She’d failed him once. She will _never_ do that again. 

He is barely one when he sits in the sand by the sea’s edge, chubby-faced and enchanted not with the castle Cid had helped him build, but the way the sparks dance off his fingers, bright stars in the evening sky--

He is six, cupping his magic in his palms and holding up the familiar to show her proudly, a tiny red flame skittering between his palms-- _look, I did it, his name is Captain Awesome--_

He is twelve, taller, sullen in his greeting as she steps into the halls of Garden for the first time in months, Ellone at her side. The betrayal rankles, stings-- _Ellone isn't_ her _daughter, Ellone is some other kid that's taken all his mother's time and attention and presence,_ stolen _it--_

He is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-- Cid sends her photos, videos filmed unsteadily on his phone with his voice booming encouragement in the background, races and basketball games and training exercises, tracking their son’s progress from child to teenager to well on his way to becoming SeeD. She watches him fail his exam when he is sixteen, and the angry destruction of his dorm room that follows--

_are you a boy or a man boy or man boy or man_

He is eighteen, blood dripping down his face, Squall’s unconscious body thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, ignoring the scarlet trail they leave on Garden’s clean, clean floors. She feels the sting of the Cure that Kadowaki hits him with, and strange pride at his refusal of so much as a bandage--

_\--kome with me. leave your childhood behind--_

He had followed her into hell once. She takes his hand this time, and they walk through the darkness together.

\--

Water spells, carefully restrained, do the job of washing the blood off their hands and clothes. Aero does the work of drying them off. Neither of them speak, too rattled for words. 

They end up sitting back to back, looking over the hills. Worry and fear are a shared burden, a tidal flow back and forth between them. The ebb of it leaves her feeling emptied out, nothing in her chest but the broken glass pieces of her heart, her thoughts ephemeral, seafoam on a breaking wave. But if her thoughts are seafoam, Squall’s are an overwound watch, gears skipping, grinding, accelerating.

“Now you’re the one who’s thinking loud,” she murmurs, leaning her head back against the nape of his neck. He mimics the action, and she wrinkles her nose as his shaggy dark brown hair falls into her face. 

“You don’t have to answer,” he says softly, “but…”  
  
 _\-- spells aren’t working, it’s like they’re just bouncing back into his hands-- blood fucking_ **everywhere** _, sticky-hot and soaking through his wadded-up shirt-- Seifer’s breath is rattling in his chest, and the knowledge of what that means is a red-hot iron ball in his stomach-- Rinoa’s laser focus is fraying at the edges--_ _  
__  
_ _“I’ll tell her you said hello.”_

“... ‘her’?”

Rinoa’s breath stills for a second-- god, she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to do this, wouldn’t have to lay the worst day of her life out on display. She’s been able to keep it mostly buried, the wound in her heart scabbed over now but never fully healed. 

She’s past holding it in now. Not anymore-- not with blood still stuck under her fingernails and her soul feeling like it’s been scooped out whole.

Her heart is a mass of shattered glass in her chest, sharp edges grinding against each other, slicing her open with every movement.

What’s one more shard?  
  
“... our daughter.”

She lets the memories play back, watches the shooting-star decorations go up in the nursery, watches herself folding and organizing all the tiny little pink and yellow garments. She watches Seifer singing nursery rhymes to her stomach, hoping that their baby girl would know his voice too-- 

Watches him holding a tiny, unmoving bundle of pink blankets, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” coming out cracked and broken.

When it’s over she is numb. Empty. Tears flow slow and quiet out of her closed eyes, sliding down her temples and disappearing into her hair.

She feels... hollow.

\--

Edea jerks out of the sedation with his name on her lips, at the same time as Seifer wakes up screaming, clawing at his chest. All around them, machines are shrieking, medical staff scrambling to both of their sides, Lena coming to her to keep her from falling straight to the ground as she struggles to rise. Her body won’t obey her, why won’t her legs _work--_

 _“Help him!”_ she demands, shoving Dr. Kadowaki toward Seifer. “Something attacked him, he’s lost a lot of blood--” 

Kadowaki’s head snaps around, like this is news to her, but her gaze comes back to Edea’s, brow furrowed behind bottle-glass thick lenses. “No, he’s not-- he’s fine, Edea. Now please, _relax_ , before you panic yourself into heart failure--” 

Edea doesn’t relax, can’t, _won’t_ , shoving past the doctor and stumbling, catching herself on the handles of her wheelchair, using it to propel her the last few feet to her son

Seifer is intact, whole. Sitting upright with his thick knit sweater halfway over his head, swearing the whole time. But there’s no blood, no damage, no chunks of him missing-- there is a mess of scar tissue that looks _freshly_ healed criss-crossing his chest and side. He drops the sweater on the floor, and both of them stare at the damage that isn’t, that only ever _was_. 

“Are you alright?” Edea demands, and she does not understand how this can be. 

“I--” His mouth opens and closes for a moment, as if he keeps finding words, discarding them, trying again-- _this is it this is it this is the end i’m finally done--_ “I-- yeah, yeah. I think I’m okay--” 

She moves her hands from the new scars to his face, looking into his eyes, panicked sea glass in a face still warm-tanned by the perennial Centran sun. His anxiety and adrenaline beat like a hummingbird’s wings between them-- _I’ll tell her you said hello_ , and Edea pulls him down to her, arms wrapping around him like he is thirty-five again and she is not old and withered, both sitting on the cold tile of a hospital hallway while he goes to pieces in her arms. 

_just let me die, let me see my baby girl again_

“You’re okay,” Edea whispers into the bright crown of her son’s hair, as his hands come up to dig into the back of her dress, holding on for dear life. “You’re okay.” 

_are you sure?_


	15. Chapter 15

They sit, staring at the formless light, the gray string leading off in one direction and the blue in the other. Eventually, Rinoa gets tired of sitting, shoving herself up off of the ground with a graceful ease she’d thought she’d lost when she finally hit forty-- Zone had taken her ice skating for her birthday that year, and she’d come away with a broken leg as a bonus gift. She dusts herself off, hearing tiny pebbles hit the ground and watching them as they scatter. 

“Rin--” Squall starts to say. “I didn’t know--” 

There are still grayish-beige remnants of Seifer’s blood on her loose, long dress, she notices, as she fluffs out the skirt of it around her legs. Rinoa sighs, pushing loose hair back out of her face, scowling and then fishing the hair tie out of the rest of the ponytail she’s dragged it all back in to redo the whole thing. 

“We only told a few people.” 

Cid and Edea, who had flown out on a red-eye for the birth of their first _real_ grandchild. Zone. She hadn’t even told her father (Seifer had done that, a muted, muffled conversation behind closed doors when he got sick of the constant _ringing_ of her phone.)

She watches Squall stand as well, hears the scrape of his boots across the dirt as he takes a couple of steps toward her. “You could have--” 

“What? Called you? Cried on the phone? It was _private_ , Squall.” She can feel his shock through the bond, his sorrow for that little girl-- and damn it, Rinoa hadn’t wanted his pity then, and she doesn’t want it now. She turns away, shaking her head slightly and crossing one arm in front of herself. “You had your little boy, your pretty wife, everything put together and tied up in a bow…” She trails off with a quiet sigh. “The last thing I wanted right then was to be reminded of that.” 

Both of them are still for a long moment. 

“--Dammit, Rinoa.” It comes out so quietly she thinks she might have imagined it, but the way his brow furrows and his mouth turns down in frustration is evidence enough to the contrary. “I get that. But...” 

_(we’re your friends. we_ were _, anyway.)_

Once upon a time, like everything in her life seems to be. 

She doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. “Let’s go look around or something, since we’re stuck here waiting, anyway. Might as well... what’d you call it? _Familiarize ourselves with the terrain?_ ” It’s supposed to be a joke, a way to veer off the harder path they’re starting to go down. It doesn’t sound anything like one. 

“...Fine.” 

He doesn’t make an effort to hide the frustration in his voice.

She doesn’t know why she expected him to argue, but Rinoa is glad that he doesn’t, moving to follow her down the slight incline, toward a stretch of strange, tall rocks that are about the only interesting thing to look at in this whole area. 

Of course, _interesting_ is starting to mean _dangerous_ , but her magic is buzzing beneath her skin, and if Rinoa has to sit around and do _nothing_ for any longer, she thinks she’ll start screaming. 

(She might never stop.)

The tall stones are markers, she thinks, judging by the arrangement they form around a rough hole in the ground. It looks natural, she thinks-- but nothing here is natural, really, and she can’t take that for granted. 

The air is cool and damp as she steps into the dimness, smelling of earth and loam, but there’s a hint of something rotting underneath that makes it not nearly as comforting as she wants it to be. Squall follows her in, one hand on Lionheart’s hilt, eyes sharp and alert in the darkness. Her little starlight dog stays close to her, fur feeling like the bubbles in a fizzy drink where it brushes against her legs. 

_something’s here,_ it whispers fearfully into her mind, and she has barely enough time to react, to pull her magic into a shield around herself, before she is enveloped in pitch darkness. 

\--

“--don’t have to go back in there.” 

“And what would I do then? Sit around, waiting for Leonhart to bring everyone out safely? His sister might stand a chance of coming back in one piece, but I trust him with Rin as far as I can _throw_ him,” Seifer fires back, throwing himself back down onto the chair with graceless ease, looking so much like he’s _eighteen_ again that it startles Edea entirely.

He’d taken Kadowaki’s recommended couple of hours to calm down, to get some food, to take a shower to wash off the rest of the adrenaline, but beyond the lines around his eyes, the only-slightly softer edges of his physique (no longer a battle-hardened youth but a war-worn man), the anger flashes in his gaze, familiar and hot. 

_Couple of witches already fucked up my life, I’m not giving a third one a chance at it_. 

She couldn’t have phrased it better herself. 

None of the attempts to calm himself down had helped, Edea thinks, watching him thrust out his arm to one of the medics, snapping at them to hurry the hell up, don’t they know he’s got somewhere to _be--_

“You nearly _died_ ,” she reminds him as she glances away. Not that she _needs_ to, all the sensory panic of the longest few minutes of her life playing on an endless loop between them, her hands stained red with her son’s blood, the magic refusing to sink into his chest, to _save him_ . “I can’t--”   
_(you’re all I have left.)_

He is all she has left. She cannot bury a husband, and a grandchild, _and_ her son. It would kill her. 

When she finally lifts her head again, after Lena Kadowaki is done putting the IV line back into her elbow, Seifer is staring at her like she’s said all of that aloud. 

She’d nearly forgotten what it was like to have a knight, to have someone _know_ all the deep, dark intimate parts that Edea Kramer keeps locked up tight, warded away from the world, because she may have once been _Sorceress Edea_ , all raven plumage and purple horns, but the world has teeth sharper than her ice lance, and they’ve snapped at everything she loves time and time again. 

But the knighting goes both ways. 

She feels his thoughts like drumbeats, like the rage he carries like an ember in his heart and chest and head, a flame nursed through prison and therapy and rehab and one several weeks-long stint in a psychiatric ward in Galbadia (disguised so cleverly as the Monterosa Wellness Retreat as to nearly have them all fooled during visits) when they hadn’t known what else to do with him and that anger, that fear, those dreams that kept everyone up all night, their son screaming like a child. 

_never abandoned_ **_you_ ** _i was the one who followed_ **_you_ ** _i was the one who_ **_she_ ** _pulled out of your head and made dance like a fucking puppet why the hell would_ **_you_ ** _think i’d let anyone else fall to the same fate too many goddamned_ **witches** **_\--_ **

Each word hits like a well-placed strike. 

He’s always been so good in battle. 

“I can’t abandon her, Mom.” His voice is quieter, if no less full of passion than it had been when he was shouting. “If-- look, I’m fine, either way. We go in, we get Ellone, we come out, and we all go out for a drink before we head back home-- awesome. If not…”  
  
 _(always wondered which one of us Celeste would look like. maybe now I’d find out.)_

\-- 

She thinks she hears Squall shout her name as the darkness closes in around her, but she can’t be sure-- the sound of wind drowns out everything, even her own heartbeat, like she’s standing in the center of a tornado. She tries to call out to him, but the swirling wind around her seems to pull the very breath from her lungs. Something in the maelstrom prickles against her skin, tiny needles breaking against the hasty shield around her, and she hears a mirthless, merciless laugh.   
  
_ah, you are not nearly as easy a mark as the last one,_ something hisses at her, syllables formed from nowhere out of the rush of wind in her ears. She turns, trying to find the source of the words, but there is nothing but darkness and rushing wind whipping her hair around her face. _you may even present a novel challenge…_

The voice in the wind laughs, mocking and malevolent. Realization hits like a flush of ice water in her veins, shock laced with fear-- she knows what has found her. 

_Who_ has found her. 

_silly, deluded child,_ Eden whispers in a voice like sand flowing over old bones, _you think you can stand against me? you, who have failed to protect anything in your life, you think to protect yourself?_

“You’re wrong,” Rinoa says out loud, forcing a strength she doesn’t really feel into her voice. The howl of the gale surrounding her grows louder, the laughter more mocking.

_am i? you failed to protect your friends, let them die under your hands._

She needs to find a way out of this-- that malicious whisper on the edge of hearing will drive her mad, she knows it. But the dark wind around her feels solid, almost alive, insidious as it slips into her head, howling through her mind-- it’s not something she can just walk out of. 

_you failed to protect your husband, let your marriage wither and die._   
  
She can’t magic her way out of this, either-- she needs something solid, a weapon of some sort. She knows, somehow, that she can form one here, can reach out and wrap her hand around something made from her own mind.   
  
_you failed to protect your daughter, who never even had a chance to draw breath._

Her blaster is at home in Timber, and she doesn’t think she could recreate it-- it’s too complicated, too many springs and gears. She’s a crack shot even now, years of training with Irvine and Penny in the practice range followed by years of hunting in Timber’s forests to keep her sharp— but she has even less chance of creating a functional pistol from nothing. But...

_and now you have failed your lover…_

Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, an old friend had taught her to use a light sword.   
  
Elise was always so patient, so gentle, all jokes and encouragement as she adjusted the angle of the blade and walked Rinoa through the basic forms. She remembers those blue eyes bright and merry, the sweat-damp tawny hair falling against her forehead and cheeks. She’d made it feel simple, natural-- the hilt part of her hand, the forms like a dance of muscle and metal, the blade carving patterns in air and foe alike. 

Rinoa thinks she can make a sword.

 _...tell me, child, do you_ really _think to prevail now?_

“...Yes.” Rinoa closes her hand around a hilt that feels warm in her hand, perfectly molded to her grip, and draws the blade upward in a long slash. The shadow around her offers little resistance, and she sees sparks of light in the path of the blade as it passes. 

There’s a sound, somewhere between breaking glass and a feral shriek, and as Rinoa turns to follow through on the stroke, the darkness falls away from around her like shreds of wet tissue paper. She stands again in the cave, dim and damp and slightly rotten, and Squall grabs her arm to pull her out into the sourceless light again.   
  
“Rinoa, what the _hell--_ are you okay? What was th--” He breaks off, staring down at her hand. 

She’s still holding the sword, and even in this dull light, the blade shimmers as if carved from a newborn star. 


End file.
